Autonomous Ground Vehicles – AGVs
Autonomous Ground Vehicles
Autonomous wheeled vehicles for industrial, natural and mining environments, used for area mapping, scene understanding and manipulation. These vehicles provide autonomous smart sensing, mapping and inspection. Mobile manipulators also provide adaptive sensing and object manipulation. This research area focuses on the combination of localization and mapping methods, motion planning, obstacle detection, obstacle avoidance and situation awareness, translating all these aspects into operational and useful platforms, that can increase productivity safety in smart industries.
Our team at CSIRO Robotics is extremely capable and respected in this field, with a very strong track record in the mining and manufacturing industries, which was what initially brought worldwide recognition to the Lab. In recent years the capability has extended its focus to include autonomous navigation for industrial environments and environmental sensing.
A unique achievement of Data61’s include the world’s first automation of a mining dragline, a Load Haul Dump (LHD) vehicle, and a 20 tonne Hot Metal Carrier (HMC). We have also adapted and enhanced our Wildcat 3D SLAM technology for autonomous vehicle navigation, fully closing the loop and incorporating aspects of control, obstacle avoidance, localization and mapping. We have the capability to adapt this capability to suit almost any mobile platform that can take a velocity command as an input. We have also successfully demonstrated the this capability in a heterogeneous multi-robot team during our DARPA Subterranean Challenge campaign.
Awards
- CSIRO Chair’s medal for Scientific and Engineering Excellence 2022
- Queensland State iAward for Multi-Robot Navigation for effective human-robot teaming 2022
- 2nd prize winner at DARPA Subterranean Challenge finals 2021
- Endeavour Executive Award 2013
- CSIRO Complex Systems Society Award 2015 – (Complex Systems Summer School 2015 – Santa Fe, New Mexico)
