Eric Colon

Royal Military Academy · Department of Mechanics

Autonomous exploration of an unknown environment by a mobile robot can be beneficial as robots can navigate in unknown environments without maps being supplied. Also it provides the possibility to produce maps without human interaction. Frontier based exploration is used here as the method for exploration. Some simulation and real world results wit...

Over the year's research in robotics has moved from a limited capability single robot to multi-robot systems equipped with a plethora of sensors, leading to de-facto multi-processor and distributed applications. Developing ad-hoc solutions based on low level communication libraries is not an efficient approach and makes reuse and sharing of softwar...

In dangerous tasks it can be advantageous to deploy robots to keep human participation to a minimum. Especially a team of cooperating robots can provide a valuable asset, as is the case in the transport problem studied here. The goal is to transport goods from one location to another through unknown hostile terrain as fast and safe as possible...

Autonomous robotic systems can play an important role in the automated surveillance of high-risk areas, as they provide a way of keeping humans out of the danger zones. In the application envisaged in this paper, the main goal for the robot team is to guard the perimeter of a military camp in a hostile environment. The camp is approached (attacked)...

This paper discusses a decentralized multi-robot coordina-tion strategy which aims to control and guide a team of robotic agents safely through a hostile area. The "hostility" of the environment is due to the presence of enemy forces, seeking to intercept the robotic team. In order to avoid detection and ensure global team safety, the robotic agent...

Teams of robotic agents can provide a valuable asset in a military context where hostile conditions can create a hazardous working environment. A possible application for these multi-agent robotic systems consists of the surveillance of an urban environment. The presented approach casts the multi-robot control problem as a behavior-based control pr...

In some more complicated tasks the use of multiple robots can be advantageous, as there are some tasks that are just not achievable by a single robot. Teams of cooperating robots can accomplish more and faster than individual robots, as is the case in the intruder detection problem. Here, two off-line algorithms are presented for intruder detection...

Teams of robotic agents can provide a valuable asset in a military context where hostile conditions can create a hazardous working environment. A possible application for these multi‐agent robotic systems consists of the surveillance of an urban environment. The presented approach casts the multirobot control problem as a behavior‐based control pro...

In the event of an emergency due to a fire or other crisis, a necessary but time consuming pre-requisite, that could delay the real rescue operation, is to establish whether the ground or area can be entered safely by human emergency workers. The objective of the VIEW-FINDER project is to develop robots which have the primary task of gathering data...

Humanitarian demining is a labor-intensive and high-risk which could benefit from the development of a humanitarian mine detection robot, capable of scanning a minefield semi- automatically. The design of such an outdoor autonomous robots requires the consideration and integration of multiple aspects: sensing, data fusion, path and motion planning...

In risky applications it is advantageous to use multiple robots in order to improve performances. In a research or patrol scenario robots have to move cooperatively in order to avoid collisions and to improve performance. In this paper we describe the implementation of two variations of a cooperative planning algorithm: Cooperative A* and Cooperati...

In the project ViewFinder mobile robots equipped with numerous perception sensors will be integrated into a command and control network. In order to improve the development process and secure the test phase, a simulation environment is mandatory. This paper presents the simulation needs of the project ViewFinder taking into account the robot missio...

This paper summarises the main results of 10 years of research and development in Humanitarian Demining. The Hudem project focuses on mine detection systems and aims at provided different solutions to support the mine detection operations. Robots using different kind of locomotion systems have been designed and tested on dummy minefields. In order...

This paper extensively describes the operability of an advanced demonstration platform incorporating reflexive teleoperated control concepts developed on a mobile robot system. By operability, the creation of an opportunity to develop, simulate, tune and test in real-world environment, mobile robot navigation algorithms is meant. During testing in...

This paper describes on-going development of a multi robot control framework named CoRoBa. CoRoBa is theoretically founded by reifying Real Time Design Patterns. It uses CORBA as its communication Middleware and consequently benefits from the interoperability of this standard. A multi-robot 3D simulator written in Java3D integrates seamlessly with...

Humanitarian demining is still a highly labor-intensive and high-risk operation. Advanced sensors and mechanical aids can significantly reduce the demining time. In this context, it is the aim to develop a humanitarian demining mobile robot which is able to scan semi-automatically a minefield. This paper discusses the development of a control schem...

Humanitarian demining still is a highly labor-intensive and high-risk operation. Advanced sensors and mechanical aids can significantly reduce the demining time. In this context, it is the aim to develop a humanitarian demining mobile robot which is able to scan a minefield semi-automatically. This paper discusses the development of a control schem...

This paper presents the recent developments of a distributed framework for integrating multi-sensor robotic systems and controlling robots. It is based on the communication middleware CORBA.

Visual servoing, or the control of motion on the basis of image analysis in a closed loop, is more and more rec-ognized as an important tool in modern robotics. In this paper, we present a new model-driven approach to derive a description of the motion of a target object. This method can be subdivided into an illumination invariant target de-tectio...

In this paper robotic systems for antipersonnel mines detection are presented. Robots with different locomotion principles have been developed to carry mines detection sensors. In this project, many different aspects including mechanics, control and positioning have been addressed. After a short review of the project and a description of the system...

The terrible antipersonnel landmines plague represents a real challenge for the robotics community. The Royal Military Academy of Belgium intends to provide its contribution for solving this problem. The Belgian Hudem project involves different workgroups each focusing on different aspects: data fusion, sensor development and sensor positioning. Th...

The introduction of advanced robotics into teleoperation in nuclear environments is very hard. Innovations such as sensor-based control, teleprogramming or virtual reality appear only very slowly in real applications. One of the main causes is the lack of proven reliability of those innovations, which depends primarily on the reliability of the har...

Antipersonnel mines are a pestilence and need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Unfortunately the techniques that are being used have hardly changed since the Second World War. Many people throughout the world are working to improve or perfect new mine-detectors. Some are also endeavouring to develop mechanical solutions to increase efficien...

Despite enthusiastic researches all over the world, completely autonomous robots are yet today an utopia. But pure teleoperated Robotics System, as generally used in unknown or dangerous environment, have also their limitations and drawbacks. The introduction of a partial autonomy, where appropriate, could greatly enhance the performances of the ma...

Antipersonnel mines kill or mutilate tens of people every day. Military mine clearance methods make use of heavy vehicles and cannot achieve a satisfying destruction percentage. Consequently, humanitarian deminers use the classical manual methods. This work is very tedious, dangerous and costly. The detection is not always reliable and is very slow...

The Nomad200 is an electrical mobile robot who is equipped with different kinds of sensors. It can be programmed and controlled in two ways: directly via the on board PC card or remotely via a UNIX workstation. In the late case, commands and data are transmitted by an ethernet radio link. The purpose of this work is to build a robust navigation alg...

Legged robots represent an alternative to the wheeled or banded platforms and several reasons can justify the development of such architectures. We previously realized two electro- pneumatical robots. We chose to develop an outdoor six-legged electro-hydraulic robot. Our aim was to provide an autonomy of 30 minutes and the capacity to move on terra...

The purpose of this article is to present a tele-robotic application, developed on an advanced demonstration plat- form, incorporating reflexive tele-operated control concepts elaborated on a mobile robot system. By voice command, the operator controls the behavior of the robot, being 1 out of 4 levels of robot-operator interaction, while environme...