A portable, autonomous, urban reconnaissance robot
Abstract
Portable mobile robots, in the size class of 20 kg or less, could be extremely valuable as autonomous reconnaissance platforms in urban hostage situations and disaster relief. We have developed a prototype urban robot on a novel chassis with articulated tracks that enable stair climbing and scrambling over rubble. Autonomous navigation capabilities of the robot include stereo vision-based obstacle avoidance, visual servoing to user-designated goals, and autonomous vision-guided stair climbing. The system was demonstrated in an urban reconnaissance mission scenario at Fort Sam Houston in October 1999. A two-axis scanning laser rangefinder has been developed and integrated into the robot for indoor mapping and position estimation. This paper describes the robot, its performance in field trials, and some of the technical challenges that remain to enable fieldable urban reconnaissance robots.
BibTeX
@article{Matthies-2002-122513,author = {Larry Matthies and Yalin Xiong and R. Hogg and David Zhu and A. Rankin and Brett Kennedy and Martial Hebert and R. MacLachlan and Chi Won and Tom Frost and G. Sukhatme and M. McHenry and S. Goldberg},
title = {A portable, autonomous, urban reconnaissance robot},
journal = {Robotics and Autonomous Systems},
year = {2002},
month = {August},
volume = {40},
number = {3},
pages = {163 - 172},
}