For robotics systems to be used in high risk, real-world situations, they have to be quickly deployable and robust to environmental changes, under-performing hardware, and mission subtask failures. Robots are often designed to consider a single sequence of mission events, with complex algorithms lowering individual subtask failure rates under some critical constraints. Our approach is to leverage common techniques in vision and control and encode robustness into mission structure through outcome monitoring and recovery strategies, aided by a system infrastructure that allows for quick mission deployments under tight time constraints and no central communication. We also detail lessons in rapid field robotics development and testing. Systems were developed and evaluated through real-robot experiments at an outdoor test site in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, as well as in the 2020 Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge. All competition trials were completed in fully autonomous mode without RTK-GPS. Our system led to 4th place in Challenge 2 and 7th place in the Grand Challenge, and achievements like popping five balloons (Challenge 1), successfully picking and placing a block (Challenge 2), and dispensing the most water autonomously with a UAV of all teams onto an outdoor, real fire (Challenge 3).
翻译:为了在高风险、现实世界情况下使用机器人系统,机器人系统必须能够迅速部署,并能够对环境变化、表现不佳的硬件和任务子任务失败进行有力应对。机器人的设计往往是为了考虑单一的一系列任务事件,其中复杂的算法降低了个别子任务失败率,但有一些关键的制约因素。我们的做法是通过成果监测和恢复战略,利用愿景和控制方面的共同技术,将稳健性纳入任务结构,同时借助一个系统基础设施,以便在紧凑的时间限制和没有中央通信的情况下迅速部署特派团。我们还详细说明了快速实地机器人开发和测试的经验教训。系统是通过美国宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡一个户外试验点的实行机器人实验以及2020年穆罕默德·本·扎耶德国际机器人挑战的实行机器人实验开发和评价的。所有竞争试验都是在没有RTK-GPS的情况下以完全自主的方式完成的。我们的系统导致在挑战2和7中占据第4位,并取得了五个气球(Challenge 1),成功挑选和放置一个块块(Challenge 2),以及将最自主的防火室配备所有UAV3。