Rescue and exploration robots (RERs) aid rescue crews in the face of disasters. Current RERs, including those manufactured by PIAP, are teleoperated, what significantly diminishes their operating range and requires constant human supervision. The conducted market analysis shows that in the near future the demand for autonomous devices will dominate. The goal of the project is to produce a set of technologies and an adequate architecture necessary for the production of autonomous RERs, or in general service and field robots. The project delivered technologies enabling: perception of the environment; navigation and control of mobile platforms and manipulators; impedance control of manipulators and grippers; intelligent two-handed manipulation; active sensing and the use of ontology common to people and robots. The results were demonstrated on several hardware  platforms, both tailored and off-the-shelf.

Partners and budget

The project's consortium consisted of the following six entities:
  1. Industrial Research Institute for Automation and Measurements PIAP (consortium leader)
  2. Warsaw University of Technology PW
  3. Wrocław University of Technology PWr
  4. Łódź University of Technology PŁ
  5. Poznań University of Technology PP
  6. Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences IPI

The total amount of the project was PLN5.0M, or EUR1.1M.

Tasks and task allocation

The project was divided into 12 following tasks. Low TRL allowed us to allocate each task to a single partner, and coordination and integration effort was taken by the consortium leader.

  1. Development of environment ontology, common for humans and robots (IPI)
  2. Implementation of the ontology and development of algorithms for updating and refining maps based on a priori knowledge (IPI)
  3. Development of perception algorithms for semantic environment maps (PIAP)
  4. Development of perception algorithms for navigation of mobile robots (PIAP)
  5. Adaptation of mobile robot for demonstration of autonomy algorithms (PIAP)
  6. Development of control and navigation algorithms for mobile robots (PP)
  7. Modelling and implementation of impedance control for manipulators and grippers (PŁ)
  8. Demonstration of impedance control for a manipulator and a gripper (PŁ)
  9. Development of models and testing properties of mobile manipulator control algorithms (PWr)
  10. Measurements, implementation and demonstration of mobile manipulator control algorithms (PWr)
  11. Development and implementation of intelligent two-handed manipulation algorithms (PW)
  12. Development and implementation of active tactile feedback algorithms (PW)