Related papers: Autonomous Fire Fighting with a UAV-UGV Team at MB…
Interest in utilizing autonomous uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) for under-canopy forest remote sensing has increased in recent years, resulting in the publication of numerous autonomous flight algorithms in the scientific literature. To…
This paper describes our recent effort to use virtual reality to simulate threatening emergency evacuation scenarios in which a robot guides a person to an exit. Our prior work has demonstrated that people will follow a robot's guidance,…
Autonomous exploration of unknown environments has been widely applied in inspection, surveillance, and search and rescue. In exploration task, the basic requirement for robots is to detect the unknown space as fast as possible. In this…
This paper introduces LIVE: Lidar Informed Visual Search focused on the problem of multi-robot (MR) planning and execution for robust visual detection of multiple objects. We perform extensive real-world experiments with a two-robot team in…
Robots will bring search and rescue (SaR) in disaster response to another level, in case they can autonomously take over dangerous SaR tasks from humans. A main challenge for autonomous SaR robots is to safely navigate in cluttered…
Over the last decade, the use of autonomous drone systems for surveying, search and rescue, or last-mile delivery has increased exponentially. With the rise of these applications comes the need for highly robust, safety-critical algorithms…
Large-scale infrastructures are prone to deterioration due to age, environmental influences, and heavy usage. Ensuring their safety through regular inspections and maintenance is crucial to prevent incidents that can significantly affect…
Autonomous maritime surveillance and target vessel identification in environments where Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are not available is critical for a number of applications such as search and rescue and threat detection.…
The LiDAR and inertial sensors based localization and mapping are of great significance for Unmanned Ground Vehicle related applications. In this work, we have developed an improved LiDAR-inertial localization and mapping system for…
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) rely on LiDAR sensors for environmental perception and decision-making in driving scenarios. However, ensuring the safety and reliability of AVs in complex environments remains a pressing challenge. To address this…
Robot deployment in realistic dynamic environments is a challenging problem despite the fact that robots can be quite skilled at a large number of isolated tasks. One reason for this is that robots are rarely equipped with powerful…
The deployment of autonomous systems has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, driven by their integration into sectors such as industry, medicine, logistics, and domestic environments. This expansion is accompanied by a series of…
Autonomous operation of UAVs in a closed environment requires precise and reliable pose estimate that can stabilize the UAV without using external localization systems such as GNSS. In this work, we are concerned with estimating the pose…
In this work, we address the problem of ensuring real-time safety in autonomous robot navigation, in spatially constrained dynamic environments, by utilizing only onboard sensors. We present a real-time control architecture that integrates…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with high-resolution sensors enable extensive data collection from previously inaccessible areas at a remarkable spatio-temporal scale, promising to revolutionize fields such as precision agriculture…
As spatial intelligence continues to evolve, heterogeneous multi-agent systems-particularly the collaboration between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), have demonstrated strong potential in complex…
Commercial UAVs are an emerging security threat as they are capable of carrying hazardous payloads or disrupting air traffic. To counter UAVs, we introduce an autonomous 3D target encirclement and interception strategy. Unlike traditional…
Most existing robot simulators prioritize rigid-body dynamics and photorealistic rendering, but largely neglect the thermally and optically complex phenomena that characterize real-world fire environments. For robots envisioned as future…
We propose a novel hybrid system (both hardware and software) of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) carrying a miniature Unmanned Ground Vehicle (miniUGV) to perform a complex search and manipulation task. This system leverages heterogeneous…
Maintaining social distancing norms between humans has become an indispensable precaution to slow down the transmission of COVID-19. We present a novel method to automatically detect pairs of humans in a crowded scenario who are not…