A Team of Independant Robots Locates Objects

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created a team of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles that work together as a team to locate targets in an urban environment. The aerial vehicles have one high resolution camera that is able to view a large area, but only with a 6m accuracy. The ground vehicles have stereo vision cameras and comb the area to find the target. The robots are all networked together and communicate any new findings to each other.

The robots are completely autonomous, but are given a map of the area they are to seach beforehand. All of the robots are equipped with GPS localization. The researchers hope that such a system could be implemented on a larger scale.


This research was done at the GRASP Lab.

Here is video of the robots in action along with a detailed description of the behavior. This is also related to our previous story about robot localizatoin based on the way the human brain works.