Posts Tagged: ‘search and rescue robotics’

Fourth TRADR Evaluation Exercise

12 November, 2017 Posted by tradr_admin

This year the last TRADR Evaluation exercise (T-Eval) took place in the port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from 13 to 16 November 2017. The location was the Deltalinqs training facility, which offers and industrial setting consisting of a maze of pipes, containers, barriers and tanks, thus providing a realistic backdrop for the TRADR scenario.

During the exercise members of the Rotterdam Harbor United Firefighters (the TRADR end-users) used the TRADR system to execute a disaster response mission. Mission objectives included the creation of maps enabling autonomous UGV navigation, multi-robot patrolling and searching for Points of Interest, such as victims, fire, smoke and chemical leakage. Additionally, the robot arm was used to retrieve samples from the hot-zone. Due to improvements of the TRADR system in terms of stability, along with various new and improved functionalities, the firefighters were able to run a large number of sorties as part of the mission. As such the last evaluation exercise was concluded successfully.

 

TRADR demonstration for general public at the European Robotics League Emergency competition

15 September, 2017 Posted by tradr_admin

A presentation of the TRADR project and a life demonstration of the TRADR system took place as part of the Public Program accompanying the European Robotics League – Emergency competition taking place on September 15-23 2017 in Piombino, Italy. The ERL Emergency is a civilian, outdoor robotics competition, with a focus on realistic, multi-domain emergency response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the ERL Emergency Grand Challenge can only be overcome when land, underwater and flying robots successfully cooperate. A public event late night on Sunday September 17 featured three EU-funded projects in the area of emergency response: Walk-Man, Sherpa and TRADR. The TRADR coordinator Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova (DFKI MLT) together with Emanuele Gissi, a Fire Officer of the Italian Firecorps (Vigili del Fuoco) delivered a presentation about the scientific results of TRADR and the TRADR deployment in Amatrice after the devastating earthquake of August 2016. Luigi Freda (La Sapienza University, Rome) demonstrated two TRADR ground robots in action in autonomous multi-robot patrolling. The event was attended among others by Mady Delvaux, Member of the European Parliament,   Anne Bajart from the EC,   Alan Winfield from University of the West of England and the ERL Emergency Coordinator, Reinhard Lafrenz, Secretary General of euRobotics AISBL. The TRADR presentation and demonstration were a great success that draw the attention of a big audience despite the late night hour.

 

euRathlon – TRADR Summer School, August 22-26, 2016 in Oulu, Finland

22 August, 2016 Posted by tradr_admin

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The ERL Emergency / TRADR summer school on Heterogeneity in Robotics Systems was held at University of Oulu’s facilities in Oulu (Finland) from the 22nd to the 26th August 2016. The summer school was jointly organised by the University of Oulu, the University of the West of England, Bristol, and TRADR EU-FP7 project.

The trend in this area is going towards multi-robot systems with different outfits, processing powers and operation spaces (ground, water, air) that shall be deployed over long periods and several sorties. This raises many challenges, including multi-modal heterogeneous mapping, semantic analysis and reasoning, (collaborative) planning under uncertainty.

The summer school program consisted of lectures on these topics, and hands-on sessions during which the participants work on practical tasks using several robots with different sensory equipment. The intended audience were undergraduate students, Master students, PhD students, postdoc students, researchers from universities/organizations and engineers from industry companies around the world.

To complete the academic program of the summer school, six speakers were invited to give a lecture to the attendees on different topics. As a reaction to the feedback given in the 2015 summer school, the total amount of lectures was lowered to give the students more time for practical exercises.

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TRADR team at Exercise Unified Response in London

4 March, 2016 Posted by tradr_admin

Several members of the TRADR team participated as observers at the Exercise Unified Response in London, March 1-4.

It was a large scale training exercise taking place at several sites in and around London, involving about 70 agencies and disaster response teams not only from London Firebrigade, but also international help from Italy, Cyprus and Hungary.  The exercise simulated a building collapse over the Waterloo underground station in central London. The scenario was built in a disused power station in Dartford, Kent.  We got really good insight, especially at the various higher levels, what a response to such a serious incident involves. It was also extremely valuable to see such a complex scenario from close up and see the immense activity of the responders, the higher  levels of tactical and strategic command and many of the other actors involved in the response.Last but not least, there were aspects of the evaluation worth taking inspiration from.

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Introducing TRADR

14 January, 2014 Posted by tradr_admin

TRADR is an integrated research project funded by the EU FP7 Programme, ICT: Cognitive systems, interaction, robotics (Project Nr. 60963).

Using a proven-in-practice user-centric design methodology, TRADR develops novel S&T for human-robot teams to assist in disaster response efforts, over multiple missions: The novel S&T makes experience persistent. Various kinds of robots collaborate with human team members to explore the environment, and gather physical samples. Throughout this collaborative effort, TRADR enables the team to gradually develop its understanding of the disaster area over, multiple possibly asynchronous missions (persistent environment models), to improve team members’ understanding of how to work in the area (persistent multi-robot action models), and to improve team-work (persistent human-robot teaming).