Intelligent Autonomy for Small Throwable Land Robots

摘要

DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robot (TMR) program includes a Throwable Robot (Throwbot) designed to the thrown into buildings, then teleoperated for surveillance purposes. Use by ground troops significant size and weight limits, as does the requirement that it survive ballistic delivery. The current program stresses the state of the art in robotics and packaging, but further challenges exist. Future Throwbots would benefit from significant increases in autonomy, to deal with RF communications difficulties in buildings and to allow simultaneous operation of multiple vehicles by one person. This paper describes both currently planned and advanced autonomous capabilities. Draper's flexible autonomous systems architecture provides the structure for these current and advanced capabilities. Limited autonomy functions are currently being designed to guard the operator's teleoperation of the vehicle, to quickly hide when danger threatens, to maneuver to improve communications when they are disrupted, and to right itself should it tumble. Advanced capabilities would include autonomous mapping with ranging and imaging sensors, exploration to map communications within the building, and searching for particular targets within the building.