Infrastructure to Support Research on Long-Term Visual Navigation of Multiple Autonomous Robots

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The requested infrastructure will be used to develop an advanced test environment for outdoor, vision-based robotic navigation. Two ground rovers and one aerial robot (an autonomous helicopter) will be outfitted with state-of-the-art stereo cameras. These robots will be deployed on the grounds of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (an area of approximately 40,000 square metres), and will be linked together through a high-speed wireless network. Experiments will compare the accuracy of visual navigation with ground truth measurements provided by a total station survey instrument. To accommodate the large quantity of information generated by the stereo cameras, and to facilitate the data mining required by machine learning algorithms, visual data will be transferred to a large storage array. This storage array will be accessible over the wireless network. Using the requested infrastructure, breakthroughs will be made in long-term autonomous visual navigation for robots.