JACOBS UNIVERSITY BREMEN

Successful Premiere: Jacobs Rescue Robots
cooperate with Aerial Robot

   

The Jacobs University robotics team headed by Andreas Birk, Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, achieved the best result in a simulated disaster scenario for the combined use of ground and aerial robots in the first Civilian European Land Robotics Trials, held from August 13 to August 16, 2007, in Monte Ceneri, Switzerland. The co-operation of ground and airborne robots is regarded as an especially promising new perspective in fire fighting, civil defence, and other disaster control operations.

[ Aug 22, 2007]  Jacobs University’s rescue robots gain support from the air: At the Civilian European Land Robotics Trials (C-ELROB) they cooperated for the first time with a flying robot developed by a company called Airrobot based in Arnsberg. A land robot – also known as Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) – and an aerial robot or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) had to cooperate in the so-called Combined UGV/UAV Scenario. Within a limited amount of time the UGV/UVA team had to detect and locate hazmat signs, presenting danger areas.

The aerial robot had to explore an area of approximately 10,000 squaremeters. It had to discover and report hazmat locations by radio communication to the land robot, which then had to reach these locations mastering difficult terrain. The scenario, proposed by fire brigades due to its high relevance for actual practice, turned out to be very challenging as the technology of aerial robots is still in its early stages and integration into other systems is not easy. Therefore only two of the fourteen teams that participated in the C-ELROB trials entered this competition. While the Jacobs- Airrobot team was able to locate and reach at least one hazmat location, the other participant, a team from the Finnish University of Oulu, did not find a single hazmat sign. The success of the Jacobs rescue robots within this competition was based on their software which can easily and efficiently be adapted to other systems. Specialists attending the competition were particularly impressed by the integration of the video- and telemetry-data from Airrobot’s aerial robot into the user interface of the Jacobs rescue robot.

The advanced level of its systems with respect to cooperation was also demonstrated by Jacobs University in a second scenario, the so-called Urban Trial. In this trial it was assumed that a terrorist attack with atomic/ biological/ chemical (ABC) substances at a festival had taken place. Hazmat signs again served as markers of hazardous spots, which the robots had to find and to locate. Eleven out of the fourteen participating teams started at this challenge. In contrast to the other groups who chose to use tele-operation, Jacobs Robotics demonstrated the potential of machine intelligence in this scenario, being the only team with two robots running in parallel while cooperatively exploring the terrain. With only a few active pointers from one single operator both robots ran to a large extent fully autonomously and coordinated their exploration efforts on their own. Though the demonstrated machine intelligence was slower in terms of driving speed than the human operators of the other ten teams, the Jacobs robots nevertheless achieved the fourth place in this scenario. The first place went to the team of Uni Würzburg with a very fast vehicle and a very strategically acting human operator. The second place went to the robot Telemax from the company Telerob, a professional system which is world wide in service in different application fields, especially bomb squads.

The Civilian European Land Robotics Trials (C-ELROB) aim at the evaluation of technology available for safety, security and rescue robotics, especially from the perspective of fire brigades, civil protection, and disaster control. Experts have accordingly participated in the design of the four trial scenarios. In addition to the Combined UGV/UAV scenario and the Urban Trial, a Non-Urban Trial, i.e., an exploration scenario in difficult natural terrain, and Autonomous Reconnaissance, i.e., navigation over regular streets as well as dirt tracks, were part of C-ELROB. Apart from an interest of civilian institutions a military interest in all four scenarios was noticeable during the whole event. Some of the teams of the C-ELROB even started with professional systems, which are already in use in conflict areas like Iraq and Afghanistan.

 


Author: Kristin Beck. Last updated on 23.08.2007. © 2007 Jacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen. All rights reserved. No unauthorized reproduction. http://www.jacobs-university.de. For all general inquiries, please call the university at +49 421 200-40 or mail to info@jacobs-university.de.