Related papers: Heterogeneous Ground and Air Platforms, Homogeneou…

The DARPA Subterranean Challenge was designed for competitors to develop and deploy teams of autonomous robots to explore difficult unknown underground environments. Categorised in to human-made tunnels, underground urban infrastructure and…

This article presents the CERBERUS robotic system-of-systems, which won the DARPA Subterranean Challenge Final Event in 2021. The Subterranean Challenge was organized by DARPA with the vision to facilitate the novel technologies necessary…

In this paper we consider the problem of coordinating robotic systems with different kinematics, sensing and vision capabilities to achieve certain mission goals. An approach that makes use of a heterogeneous team of agents has several…

Heterogeneous air-ground robot teams combine complementary sensing modalities, mobility characteristics, and spatial viewpoints that can significantly enhance perception in complex outdoor environments. However, progress in multi-robot…

Artificial intelligence has undergone immense growth and maturation in recent years, though autonomous systems have traditionally struggled when fielded in diverse and previously unknown environments. DARPA is seeking to change that with…

Autonomous exploration of subterranean environments constitutes a major frontier for robotic systems as underground settings present key challenges that can render robot autonomy hard to achieve. This has motivated the DARPA Subterranean…

Accurate and robust state estimation is critical for autonomous navigation of robot teams. This task is especially challenging for large groups of size, weight, and power (SWAP) constrained aerial robots operating in perceptually-degraded…

Heterogeneous robots equipped with multi-modal sensors (e.g., UAV, wheeled and legged terrestrial robots) provide rich and complementary functions that may help human operators to accomplish complex tasks in unknown environments. However,…

Implementing a wireless mesh network in a real-life scenario requires a significant systems engineering effort to turn a network concept into a complete system. This paper presents an evaluation of a fielded system within the DARPA…

In this paper, we investigate how heterogeneous multi-robot systems with different sensing capabilities can observe a domain with an apriori unknown density function. Common coverage control techniques are targeted towards homogeneous teams…

This paper presents a framework to enable a team of heterogeneous mobile robots to model and sense a multiscale system. We propose a coupled strategy, where robots of one type collect high-fidelity measurements at a slow time scale and…

Field robotics applications, such as search and rescue, involve robots operating in large, unknown areas. These environments present unique challenges that compound the difficulties faced by a robot operator. The use of multi-robot teams,…

Heterogeneous robot teams operating in realistic settings often must accomplish complex missions requiring collaboration and adaptation to information acquired online. Because robot teams frequently operate in unstructured environments --…

Ground robots always get collision in that only if they get close to the obstacles, can they sense the danger and take actions, which is usually too late to avoid the crash, causing severe damage to the robots. To address this issue, we…

We present a field report of CTU-CRAS-NORLAB team from the Subterranean Challenge (SubT) organised by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The contest seeks to advance technologies that would improve the safety and…

The recent availability of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) legged robot platforms have opened up new opportunities in deploying legged systems into different scenarios. While the main advantage of legged robots is their ability to traverse…

Heterogeneous multi-robot systems feature significant adaptability for complex environments. However, effective collaboration that fully exploits the robots' potential remains a core challenge. This paper proposes a decentralized…

Heterogeneous multi-robot systems are advantageous for operations in unknown environments because functionally specialised robots can gather environmental information, while others perform tasks. We define this decomposition as the…

We consider the problem of multi-robot sensor coverage, which deals with deploying a multi-robot team in an environment and optimizing the sensing quality of the overall environment. As real-world environments involve a variety of sensory…

We present the design and implementation of a decentralised, heterogeneous multi-robot system for performing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in an unknown environment. The team consists of functionally specialised robots…