Related papers: Team CERBERUS Wins the DARPA Subterranean Challeng…

This paper presents a novel strategy for autonomous teamed exploration of subterranean environments using legged and aerial robots. Tailored to the fact that subterranean settings, such as cave networks and underground mines, often involve…

Human operators in human-robot teams are commonly perceived to be critical for mission success. To explore the direct and perceived impact of operator input on task success and team performance, 16 real-world missions (10 hrs) were…

Despite decades of efforts, robot navigation in a real scenario with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA for short), remains a challenging topic. Inspired by the central nervous system (CNS), we propose a hierarchical…

With the real need of field exploration in large-scale and extreme outdoor environments, cooperative exploration tasks have garnered increasing attention. This paper presents a comprehensive review of multi-robot cooperative exploration…

The BARN (Benchmark Autonomous Robot Navigation) Challenge took place at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2022) in Philadelphia, PA. The aim of the challenge was to evaluate state-of-the-art autonomous…

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) in large-scale, unknown, and complex subterranean environments is a challenging problem. Sensors must operate in off-nominal conditions; uneven and slippery terrains make wheel odometry…

This paper presents an appendix to the original NeBula autonomy solution developed by the TEAM CoSTAR (Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots), participating in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. Specifically, this paper presents…

We present a method for solving the coverage problem with the objective of autonomously exploring an unknown environment under mission time constraints. Here, the robot is tasked with planning a path over a horizon such that the accumulated…

Planetary exploration missions require robots capable of navigating extreme and unknown environments. While wheeled rovers have dominated past missions, their mobility is limited to traversable surfaces. Legged robots, especially…

Exploration and mapping of unknown environments is a fundamental task in applications for autonomous robots. In this article, we present a complete framework for deploying MAVs in autonomous exploration missions in unknown subterranean…

To achieve autonomy in complex real-world exploration missions, we consider deployment strategies for a team of robots with heterogeneous autonomy capabilities. In this work, we formulate a multi-robot exploration mission and compute an…

There are several challenges for search and rescue robots: mobility, perception, autonomy, and communication. Inspired by the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge, we propose an autonomous blimp robot, which has the advantages of low power…

Search and rescue with a team of heterogeneous mobile robots in unknown and large-scale underground environments requires high-precision localization and mapping. This crucial requirement is faced with many challenges in complex and…

This paper serves as one of the first efforts to enable large-scale and long-duration autonomy using the Boston Dynamics Spot robot. Motivated by exploring extreme environments, particularly those involved in the DARPA Subterranean…

Robots that solve complex tasks in environments too dangerous for humans to enter are desperately needed, e.g. for search and rescue applications. We describe our mobile manipulation robot Momaro, with which we participated successfully in…

This work contributes a marsupial robotic system-of-systems involving a legged and an aerial robot capable of collaborative mapping and exploration path planning that exploits the heterogeneous properties of the two systems and the ability…

Most of the quadrupeds developed are highly actuated, and their control is hence quite cumbersome. They need advanced electronics equipment to solve convoluted inverse kinematic equations continuously. In addition, they demand special and…

Real-world deployment of new technology and capabilities can be daunting. The recent DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge, for instance, aimed at the advancement of robotic platforms and autonomy capabilities in three one-year development…

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean Challenge requires teams of robots to traverse difficult and diverse underground environments. Traversing small gaps is one of the challenging scenarios that robots…

For robotic systems to succeed in high risk, real-world situations, they have to be quickly deployable and robust to environmental changes, under-performing hardware, and mission subtask failures. These robots are often designed to consider…