US Army online appeal for RoboCops
p2pnet news view | Crime:- “Develop a software and sensor package to enable a team of robots to search for and detect human presence in an indoor environment.”
No, this isn’t a line in a Sci-Fi fantasy movie script. It’s the genuine opening to a US Army request for a 100 Kg robot, and it even references CARMEN, the Carnegie Mellon Robot Navigation Toolkit on sourceforge, as well as online gaming communities.
“CARMEN is an open-source collection of software for mobile robot control,” says the site, going on, “CARMEN is modular software designed to provide basic navigation primatives including: base and sensor control, logging, obstacle avoidance, localization, path planning, and mapping.”
With that in mind, “There are many research efforts within robotics in path planning, exploration, and mapping of indoor and outdoor environments,” posts the US Army, continuing »»»
Operator control units are available that allow semi-autonomous map-based control of a team of robots.
While the test environments are usually benign, they are slowly becoming longer and more complex. There has also been significant research in the game theory community involving pursuit/evasion scenarios.
This topic seeks to merge these research areas and develop a software/hardware suit that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject.
In one-of-a-kind prose, “The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject, while minimizing the chances of missing the subject,” says the request, going on »»»
If the operator is an active member of the search team, the software should minimize the chance that the operator may encounter the subject. As a simplification, the building layout could be given, although operating in an unknown environment with unknown obstacles is more realistic. The latter case should be studied at least in simulation. The software should maintain awareness of line-of-sight, as well as communication and sensor limits. It will be necessary to determine an appropriate sensor suite that can reliably detect human presence and is suitable for implementation on small robotic platforms. Additionally, the robot may not have the intelligence, sensing, or manipulative power to perform reconnaissance under full autonomy.
For example, the robot may not be able to negotiate all obstacles, determine the course of action when confronted with difficult choices, or have sufficient team members to optimally search. Part of the research will involve determining what role the human operator will play in the search task. The system should flag the operator when assistance is required. Typical robots for this type of activity are expected to weigh less than 100 Kg and the team would have three to five robots.
The pic in the right is of the Northrop Grumman Wolverine, a, “workhorse robot that won’t quit until you do”.
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