Related papers: Athena: An Autonomous Open-Hardware Tracked Rescue…
The increasing complexity of natural disaster incidents demands innovative technological solutions to support first responders in their efforts. This paper introduces the TRIFFID system, a comprehensive technical framework that integrates…
This paper studies a heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) cooperative search approach suitable for complex environments. In the application, a fixed-wing UAV drops rotor UAVs to deploy the cluster rapidly. Meanwhile, the fixed-wing…
Indoor built environments like homes and offices often present complex and cluttered layouts that pose significant challenges for individuals who are blind or visually impaired, especially when performing tasks that involve locating and…
The use of standard robotic platforms can accelerate research and lower the entry barrier for new research groups. There exist many affordable humanoid standard platforms in the lower size ranges of up to 60cm, but larger humanoid robots…
The recent increase in yearly spacecraft launches and the high number of planned launches have raised questions about maintaining accessibility to space for all interested parties. A key to sustaining the future of space-flight is the…
Mobile agents that can leverage help from humans can potentially accomplish more complex tasks than they could entirely on their own. We develop "Help, Anna!" (HANNA), an interactive photo-realistic simulator in which an agent fulfills…
Guidance robots that can guide people and avoid various obstacles, could potentially be owned by more visually impaired people at a fairly low cost. Most of the previous guidance robots for the visually impaired ignored the human response…
The demand and the potential for automation in the construction sector is unmatched, particularly for increasing environmental sustainability, improving worker safety and reducing labor shortages. We have developed an autonomous walking…
Legged robots have the potential to become vital in maintenance, home support, and exploration scenarios. In order to interact with and manipulate their environments, most legged robots are equipped with a dedicated robot arm, which means…
Search and rescue operations require unmanned aerial vehicles to both traverse unknown unstructured environments at high speed and track targets once detected. Achieving both capabilities under degraded sensing and without global…
Jenny 5 is a fully open-source robot intended to be used mainly for research but can also act as a human assistant. It has a mobile platform with rubber tracks, a flexible leg, two arms with 7 degrees of freedom each and head with 2 degrees…
In this paper, a control approach called Artificial Neural Tissue (ANT) is applied to multirobot excavation for lunar base preparation tasks including clearing landing pads and burying of habitat modules. We show for the first time, a team…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to establish flexible and reliable emergency networks in disaster sites when terrestrial communication infrastructures go down. Nevertheless, potential security threats may occur on UAVs…
Degraded rangelands undergo continual shifts in the appearance and distribution of plant life. The nature of these changes however is subtle: between seasons seedlings sprout up and some flourish while others perish, meanwhile, over…
The Athena Startup Kit (ASK), is an interactive front-end to the Atlas software framework (ATHENA). Written in python, a very effective "glue" language, it is build on top of the, in principle unrelated, code repository, build,…
UAVs are becoming versatile and valuable platforms for various applications. However, the main limitation is their flying time. We present BEAVIS, a novel aerial robotic platform striking an unparalleled trade-off between the…
Learning-based methods have achieved strong performance for quadrupedal locomotion. However, several challenges prevent quadrupeds from learning helpful indoor skills that require interaction with environments and humans: lack of…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used platforms to carry data capturing sensors for various applications. The reason for this success can be found in many aspects: the high maneuverability of the UAVs, the capability of performing…
In this paper, we introduce the Phoenix drone: the first completely open-source tail-sitter micro aerial vehicle (MAV) platform. The vehicle has a highly versatile, dual-rotor design and is engineered to be low-cost and easily…
Emergency response events are fast-paced, noisy, and they require teamwork to accomplish the mission. Furthermore, the increasing deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) alongside emergency responders, demands a new form of…