Further information about the workshop is available online at
Category: ‘Events’
Announcement: euRathlon – TRADR Summer School, August 22-26, 2016 in Oulu, Finland
The euRathlon/TRADR Workshop and Summer School 2016 on Heterogeneity in Robotics Systems is designed as a five-day course to provide participants with both theoretical and practical insight in multi-domain real robotic systems for deployment in disaster response scenarios. 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 will consist 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 is undergraduate students, Master students, PhD students, postdoc students, researchers from universities/organizations and engineers from industry companies around the world.
The summer school is jointly organised by EURATHLON and TRADR EU Horizon 2020 and FP7 projects, respectively.
Organisers
Juha Röning (University of Oulu, Finland)
Ivana Kruijff-Korbayová (DFKI, Germany)
Marta Palau Franco (UWE Bristol, UK)
Abel Gawel (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Renaud Dubé (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Summers school venue
Oulu, Finland, at the University of Oulu. www.oulu.fi
Pentti Kaiteran katu 1, 90014 Oulu, Finland.
Important dates
– Application deadline 31 May 2016
– Notification of acceptance: 3 June 2016
– Registration deadline: 15 June 2016
– Summer school kick-off: 22 August 2016
Submission guidelines
Applications should be submitted via email in PDF format to Prof Juha Röning (eurathlon@uwe.ac.uk). All applicants must provide a free format letter (max. 2 pages) describing their research. Papers/posters are not compulsory for attending the summer school, but participants who have submitted a paper will have priority over participants who haven not submitted one.
- Registration fee with accommodation: 230€/person
- Registration fee without accommodation: 60€/person
Students enrolled in EU Universities, EU Research Centres or EU Companies have the possibility of getting travel support.
TRADR Year 2 Review in Dortmund, Germany
The TRADR Year 2 review took place in Dortmund (Germany) on Wednesday March 16 and Thursday March 17. On Wednesday the consortium presented its scientific results and on Thursday we demonstrated the integrated system at Phönix Phönix West, an abandoned furnace. The integrated system showcased Y2 work, with emphasis on persistence. The demonstration mission was carried out by a team consisting of a mission commander, a team leader, two UGVs each with an operator and one UAV with an operator and a pilot. One of the UGVs had a camera-equipped arm. The human team members operated remotely from a command truck, except for the UAV pilot in line of sight. The team assessed a part of the building, searched for victims and sources of potentially dangerous materials. The UAV was used for initial overview and subsequent search on the outside, the UGVs explored multilevel terrain inside, partially obstructed by smoke. Main focus was on acquiring and sharing situation awareness among team members across multiple sorties and across team shifts. The robots mapped the environment, provided a video feed and were used to take photos. The human team members were equipped with interfaces presenting them information according to their role(s). Team communication and information about the progress of the mission were collected and accessible in a mission reporting tool. We demonstrated various partial autonomy features designed to facilitate the human operators’ task, including terrain profile estimation from interoceptive sensing, adaptive traversability to automatically control the UGV flippers, a novel free-look control mode for the UGV, virtual bumpers on the UAV. Finally, a mixed-initiative path planning approach and a novel mapping framework designed to support persistence and decrease computational load were also presented. The overall progress of the project was evaluated by the predicate “very good”.
TRADR team at Exercise Unified Response in London
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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