Autonomous urban platform

The project combines research in navigation and mapping with a modular reusable implementation.

• Alexei Makarenko

• Alex Brooks
• Tobias Kaupp
• Stefan Williams
• Duncan Mercer
• Seward ('Chip') Pulitzer (past personnel)

The main objective of the project is reliable long-term operation of a robotic ground vehicle in an outdoor environment.

Our plan is to achieve this goal in three steps:

1. Build a reliable hardware/software combination.
2. Using this platform, pursue new research in navigation, terrain classification, obstacle avoidance.
3. Demonstrate long-term (several hours) operation of the vehicle in an outdoor urban environment.

• Start - 2005
• End - ongoing

• To achieve the desired level of hardware reliability we use a commercial platform purchased from Segway.
• We see modular component-based architecture as key to software quality and scalability. The requirements of this project partly drive the open-source Orca project.
• We hope that having access to a reliable robot with significant payload capacity and power will allow us pursue interesting experimental research on outdoor navigation, obstacle avoidance, visual terrain classification, etc.

• Australian Defence Force

• Research -
• Project - Others
• Active - yes