Thanks to the efforts of the robotics and autonomous systems community, robots are becoming ever more capable. There is also an increasing demand from end-users for autonomous service robots that can operate in real environments for extended periods. In the STRANDS project we are tackling this demand head-on by integrating state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and robotics research into mobile service robots, and deploying these systems for long-term installations in security and care environments. Over four deployments, our robots have been operational for a combined duration of 104 days autonomously performing end-user defined tasks, covering 116km in the process. In this article we describe the approach we have used to enable long-term autonomous operation in everyday environments, and how our robots are able to use their long run times to improve their own performance.
@article{arxiv.1604.04384,
title = {The STRANDS Project: Long-Term Autonomy in Everyday Environments},
author = {Nick Hawes and Chris Burbridge and Ferdian Jovan and Lars Kunze and Bruno Lacerda and Lenka Mudrová and Jay Young and Jeremy Wyatt and Denise Hebesberger and Tobias Körtner and Rares Ambrus and Nils Bore and John Folkesson and Patric Jensfelt and Lucas Beyer and Alexander Hermans and Bastian Leibe and Aitor Aldoma and Thomas Fäulhammer and Michael Zillich and Markus Vincze and Eris Chinellato and Muhannad Al-Omari and Paul Duckworth and Yiannis Gatsoulis and David C. Hogg and Anthony G. Cohn and Christian Dondrup and Jaime Pulido Fentanes and Tomas Krajník and João M. Santos and Tom Duckett and Marc Hanheide},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.04384},
year = {2017}
}