Category: ‘Media & Press’

Excellent final review of TRADR

23 March, 2018 Posted by tradr_admin

The FP7 TRADR project held its final review meeting at an industrial site in Mestre, Italy, under the great hospitality of the Comando Provinciale Venezia Vigili del Fuoco on 21-22 March 2018. The review was attended by the EC Project Officer, three external reviewers and representatives from all the eleven partners of the TRADR consortium. More than 30 members of the large TRADR team participated to the meeting and contributed to the success of the project.

The very tight agenda contained presentations of the scientific results/achievements and three integrated demonstration sessions in which the functionalities of the TRADR integrated system were showcased in action operated by firefighters in an industrial-incident response mission (this video gives an impression of the demonstration scenario).

The reviewers and the project officer gave overwhelmingly positive final feedback on the excellent S&T progress achieved in the project and its impact. They praised the close collaboration with the end users and their active involvement and contributions throughout the project. The TRADR consortium in its turn was grateful for the constructive feedback it had been receiving from the reviewers and the support from the Project Officer.

 

Big thanks to everyone who has contributed

to the success and excellence of the TRADR project!!!

 

Amatrice deployment in the book “The Future of Robotics”

13 March, 2018 Posted by tradr_admin

The Amatrice deployment is mentioned with pictures in the book “The Future of Robotics”
published by Ernst \& Young Advisory Co., Ltd. Japan in 2017. URL of the book (in Japanese):

TRADR Technology Day 2017 in Rotterdam

17 November, 2017 Posted by tradr_admin

More than 60 guests from the Netherlands and abroad gathered on the premises of the RDM Congress Center in Rotterdam on November 17 2017 for the TRADR Technology Day. Most of them represented various Firebrigade organizations, several came from robotics companies and some from universities and research institutes. The program of the day consisted of presentations, discussions, a poster session and demonstrations of the TRADR integrated system.

In the introduction about the TRADR project the coordinator Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova explained the TRADR goals, approach and outcomes. She stressed the importance of the close collaboration between researchers and end users in TRADR, which has also enabled the project to deploy its technology in a real disaster response after the earthquake in Amatrice, Italy in 2016.  Presentation

 

Martijn Zagwijn, information management specialist of Firebrigade Twente introduced the drone project he is leading. The drone project provides disaster management support and has been in operation since January 1 2016 after two years of preparations, needed to comply with all regulations. Currently it is being extended to a nation-wide project. Presentation

 

Hauke Speth, head of the Training Department and Institute for Fire and Rescue Technology at City of Dortmund Fire Department reviewed the experiences of the Dortmund Firebrigage with the use of robots in the research projects ANCHORS and TRADR and the ensuing inclusion of a drone as part of their regular incident response capability. He stressed that it is essential that operators be used to deploy the systems in everyday practice, and underlined the importance of collaboration between research, industry and end users in order to advance the use of robots for disaster response. Presentation

During the poster session the TRADR project partners presented their results in a broad range of areas:  learning for exploration, detection and 3D mapping; learning and modelling for terrain perception and robot control; perception and control for manoeuvring and manipulation; multi-robot localisation and change detection; multi-robot autonomous patrolling and exploration; 3D mapping for UAVs; human-robot teamwork modelling; enhancing human-robot team performance with work agreements;  team communication processing; user strategy for tactical command.

The TRADR integrated system was presented in action in a simulated incident response mission enacted at the Deltalinqs training plant. End users from the Gezaamenlijke Brandweer controlled the TRADR ground robots to explore the incident area, locate victims, identify hazard sources and collect samples. The guests could observe the mission progress in the TRADR command post, where they could see how TRADR supports  situation awareness of the team,  and in the field, where they obtained explanations about the robot capabilities, including mapping, autonomous terrain traversal, guided manipulation and multi-robot patrolling and exploration. Since the regulations did not allow the team to fly the TRADR UAVs, the capabilities for UAV 3D mapping and data collection were explained using video material.

During the discussion sessions the participants exchanged experience and opinions about the current and future use of robots in incident response, the obstacles that block robot use and how to overcome them. The representatives of the Dutch Firebrigade organizations used the opportunity to discuss how to synchronize their efforts at the national level.

 

The TRADR Technology Day provided an opportunity for fruitful discussions and establishing new contacts.
We hope that it has made a useful contribution to the future of robot-assisted disaster response. A video from the event can be found here.

 

The event was part of the European Robotics Week 2017. Tweet about the event #ERW2017.

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.

 

TRADR SIKS Summerschool 2017, August 21-25 in Utrecht, The Netherlands

21 August, 2017 Posted by tradr_admin

 

An international group of students, postdocs and researchers with interest in the topic of human-robot teaming met in Utrecht on August 21-25 to attend the TRADR/SIKS summer school (https://sites.google.com/view/tradr/home).

The 5-day course covered aspects of teaming and collaboration between humans and robots in multiple domains.

 

Ivana Kruijff-Korbayová (DFKI)

 

 

and Robin Murphy (Texas A&M University)

 

addressed the use of robots in disaster response missions.  Matt Johnson (Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition) presented Coactive Design and interdependence analysis, which help designers understand the impact of design choices on overall system performance when designing advanced and sophisticated human-machine systems. In a similar vein, Mark Neerincx (TNO) presented the situated Cognitive Engineering (sCE) methodology, which provides the ingredients for a systematic integration of human factors into an incremental and iterative development process. David Abbink (Delft University of Technology) shared insights in control using physical interaction through forces, applied in successful prototypes for controlling vehicles and telerobotic arms. Also Pieter Jonker  (Delft University of Technology) shared his rich experience in developing  robots for various applications.  Maj. W.A.Samson (Royal Netherlands Army) and Sgt-Maj. Ben Schaik (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) shared their experiences with deployment of air and ground unmanned vehicles, respectively. The summer school program was rounded off by several practical interactive sessions. This was the fourth and final TRADR summer school.

See also the blogpost by Roland Meertens for further information.