Related papers: Building Forest Inventories with Autonomous Legged…
We present a solution for autonomous forest inventory with a legged robotic platform. Compared to their wheeled and aerial counterparts, legged platforms offer an attractive balance of endurance and low soil impact for forest applications.…
Drones are increasingly used in forestry to capture high-resolution remote sensing data, supporting enhanced monitoring, assessment, and decision-making processes. While operations above the forest canopy are already highly automated,…
This paper presents an integrated system for performing precision harvesting missions using a legged harvester. Our harvester performs a challenging task of autonomous navigation and tree grabbing in a confined, GPS denied forest…
The ability to efficiently and effectively explore planetary surfaces is currently limited by the capability of wheeled rovers to traverse challenging terrains, and by pre-programmed data acquisition plans with limited in-situ flexibility.…
According to the European Union's Habitat Directive, habitat monitoring plays a critical role in response to the escalating problems posed by biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. Scree habitats, hosting unique and often…
Forests, as critical components of our ecosystem, demand effective monitoring and management. However, conducting real-time forest inventory in large-scale and GNSS-interrupted forest environments has long been a formidable challenge. In…
The interest in exploring planetary bodies for scientific investigation and in-situ resource utilization is ever-rising. Yet, many sites of interest are inaccessible to state-of-the-art planetary exploration robots because of the robots'…
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…
Despite the progress in legged robotic locomotion, autonomous navigation in unknown environments remains an open problem. Ideally, the navigation system utilizes the full potential of the robots' locomotion capabilities while operating…
Robotic exploration of underground environments is a particularly challenging problem due to communication, endurance, and traversability constraints which necessitate high degrees of autonomy and agility. These challenges are further…
Legged robots, specifically quadrupeds, are becoming increasingly attractive for industrial applications such as inspection. However, to leave the laboratory and to become useful to an end user requires reliability in harsh conditions. From…
Forestry is a major industry in many parts of the world. It relies on forest inventory, which consists of measuring tree attributes. We propose to use 3D mapping, based on the iterative closest point algorithm, to automatically measure tree…
Legged robots are able to navigate complex terrains by continuously interacting with the environment through careful selection of contact sequences and timings. However, the combinatorial nature behind contact planning hinders the…
Autonomous harvesting and transportation is a long-term goal of the forest industry. One of the main challenges is the accurate localization of both vehicles and trees in a forest. Forests are unstructured environments where it is difficult…
This paper shows the achievement of a sensing and navigation system of aerial robot for measuring location and size of trees in a forest environment autonomously. Although forestry is an important industry in Japan, the working population…
Legged robots have demonstrated remarkable agility on rigid, stationary ground, but their locomotion reliability remains limited in non-inertial environments, where the supporting ground moves, tilts, or accelerates. Such conditions arise…
We present a novel system, AdVENTR for autonomous robot navigation in unstructured outdoor environments that consist of uneven and vegetated terrains. Our approach is general and can enable both wheeled and legged robots to handle outdoor…
Legged robots need to make contact with irregular surfaces, when operating in unstructured natural terrains. Representing and perceiving these areas to reason about potential contact between a robot and its surrounding environment, is still…
Currently, mobile robots are developing rapidly and are finding numerous applications in the industry. However, several problems remain related to their practical use, such as the need for expensive hardware and high power consumption…
Covering one third of Earth's land surface, forests are vital to global biodiversity, climate regulation, and human well-being. In Europe, forests and woodlands reach approximately 40% of land area, and the forestry sector is central to…