Collaborative and well-behaved outdoor robots in harsh environment
Collaboration between robots of different domains is necessary in many disaster scenarios, for example by utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for coarse area mapping and using unmanned ground and surface vehicles (UGVs and USVs) to perform environment manipulation. In this talk I will consider challenges with robots operating on harsh environment collaborating with humans and other robots. There are numerous robotics competitions, ranging from those of mainly educational purpose (e.g. FIRST Robotics Competition, World Robot Olympiad, BEST) to those whose goal is to inspire and promote new cutting-edge research with significant prizes (e.g. DARPA Robotics Challenge ) with numerous competitions being some mixture of the these two goals (e.g. NASA The Centennial Challenges, Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition[16],International Autonomous Robot Racing Challenge , RoboRAVE , RoboGames , RoboCup ,VEX Robotics Competition, RoboSub , MATE, SAUC-E , Maritime RobotX Challenge, RoboBoat , International Aerial Robotics Competition, Student Unmanned Air System, UAV Outback Challenge ). ERL Emergency is a competition of this mixed category and its participants range from university students to experienced academic and industry professionals. Amongst all the listed competitions, ERL Emergency is unique in its incorporation of all the three main robotics domains of air, land and water. In ERL Emergency, successful teams must be able to set up and use highly heterogeneous and interconnected robots to complete highly complex search-and-rescue (SAR) and other emergency related tasks in varied environments. In short, ERL Emergency tests the capabilities of multi-robot systems (MRS) in SAR and other disaster scenarios. In this talk, the challenges and hands-on experiences on realistic scenarios and terrains are presented. It includes a series of event arrange in ELROB (European Land Robot Trial), euRathlon and now under umbrella of ERL. Also a new testing site, OuluZone, where the harsh weather conditions, unevenness on terrain and dynamic driving conditions challenge outdoor robots. Our aim is to provide reliable operation in any conditions. An ultimate goal is to provide a driving license for autonomous heavy machines.
Lecture at NEMO2017
Date/Time: Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 10:00