A competition for academia and industry.

Extreme Environments Robot Challenge 2017 is an international competition 

It is anticipated that this challenge will cover a wide range of scenarios, involving the threat to human life from unpredictable events including accidents, manmade and natural disasters, as well as terrorist activities.
 
The challenge is to build robust emergency response systems that can be exploited in extreme environments, such as collapsed buildings following an earthquake or terrorist attacks, or Polar Regions for monitoring indicators of climate change.
 
We regard situational awareness to lie at the heart of this problem. This requires large scale, sometimes longterm mapping and monitoring, including localisation of emergency responders and victims for rapid onset natural disasters, long-term monitoring of climate change as well as timely coordination of all resources available - including people and autonomous systems.
 
Another major challenge in these scenarios is the continuous integration, reconciliation and reuse of information coming from disparate sources including lidars, sensors, mobile cameras, satellite images, thermal imaging and 2G-5G cellular networks.

The research issues to be addressed include:

  1. Physical robustness – how can autonomous systems be design and manufactured to withstand harsh, changeable environments (poor weather conditions, unstable surroundings, unfavourable temperatures), rough handling, complex manipulation and rapid deployment;
  2. Reliable long-range communications – the need for systems to have safety critical communications/control networking over long distances;
  3. System degradation – the ability for the systems performance to gracefully degrade (no single point of failure);
  4. Dynamic and variable autonomy – how to orchestrate different levels of autonomous operation;
  5. RAS combined with cyber security – the need for secure command and control connections to prevent hijacking. Precision navigation often in GNSS (global navigation satellite system) denied areas – how to sense and map the surroundings when conventional methods are denied or not reliable/accurate;
  6. Control of multiple heterogeneous robots – how to coordinate, interface and utilise multiple assets and share information from multiple data sources of variable reliability and accuracy.

Underpinning technologies will include:

  1. Robotic exploration and sensing at high latitudes (resilience, agility and reliability in extreme, polar environments) and areas in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters (e.g. earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, collapsed structures, traffic collisions);
  2. Robotic resupply of remote sites (research facilities and communities in harsh, unfavourable environments) using surface and aerial vehicles;
  3. Extremely difficult communications, especially over mountainous landscapes and/or over extremely long ranges, or via thick layers of rock/ collapsed structures;
  4. Navigational challenges caused by ionospheric scintillations and satellites at low elevation angles, as well as underground or collapsed emergency environments;
  5. The impact of extreme temperatures and weather on RAS components, in particular battery technology/energy management.

Dates

Extreme Environments Robot Challenge 2017 will be held during the UK Robotics Week on 26 - 27th June 2017.

 

Event date: 
Monday, June 26, 2017 - 09:00 to Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - 18:00