Coordinated control and navigation of field robots

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This proposal requests funding to purchase a research mobile robot platform to facilitate research in field robotics. The research objective is to develop a field robotic capability in Memorial University to advance and implement autonomous robotic technology for applications that requires robots to navigate through a larger area (or a distance) that can be applicable for both indoor and outdoor conditions. Under field robotics it is expected to develop research in several areas, namely, task specific behaviour based control and coordination of robots, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) techniques to cover a larger distance (in the order of hundred kilometers), biologically inspired control methods for formation control using leader-follower techniques and finally multi-robot surveillance with optimal path planning. The behaviour modulation for robots includes formation of behaviours to operate multiple robots under a single objective and translation them in to a sequence of navigational tasks to produce motor control commands for keeping a formation in an unstructured environment. The constraints applicable for the robots include noisy and limited sensor perception, limited communication capabilities in transmitting robot state and finally constraints imposed by the environment. The second issue is related to the development of SLAM techniques in the context of larger area of mapping and localization. The third and final issue is related to develop cognitive capability for robots to operate with human supervision. In this case the multi-modal sensor based robotic attention techniques will be developed to work with human supervision.