Robodog assists
It doesn't have to be an alien planet. But what's driving a significant technological leap in intralogistics also warrants a look at external robotic solutions, such as those that have been gaining traction in the construction and agricultural industries for some time now. For example, controlling excavators from 500 km away.
Recently, a new Robotics Institute Germany (RIG) was established at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Processing (IOSB) in Karlsruhe. This institute coordinates the field of AI-based large-scale robotics, which includes autonomous construction machines, agricultural robots, and other heavy machinery capable of independently performing complex tasks.
Similar questions have already been explored at the "Robots for Decontamination in Hazardous Environments" (ROBDEKON) competence center. Jürgen Beyerer, head of the IOSB institute and spokesperson for ROBDEKON, presented the results at a conference in Berlin. Conference participants were able to witness an autonomous excavator, located over 500 km away, being tasked with retrieving barrels. An optional robot dog named "Spot" was also involved. The demonstration visualized the environment model captured by the excavator's sensors, while an autonomous excavator, named ALICE, automatically filled a dump truck as part of a landfill remediation project.
Driver unnecessary. Photos: IOSB
The Robotics Institute Germany is a decentralized competence network funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research with €20 million. In this project, coordinated by the Technical University of Munich, Fraunhofer IOSB, as a consortium partner, is tasked with establishing the thematic cluster of large-scale robotics.
Autonomous large-scale robotics encompasses advanced robotic systems such as autonomous construction machinery (excavators, wheel loaders, cranes, etc.), agricultural robots, and other heavy-duty machinery (snowplows, garbage trucks, etc.). AI is intended to enable these robots to move in large, unstructured environments and independently perform complex exploration and manipulation tasks.
“The systems use artificial intelligence to interpret sensor data and react accordingly. This allows them to perform tasks autonomously, without direct human intervention. This offers many advantages: It increases efficiency, relieves skilled personnel of monotonous and repetitive tasks, and, above all, can prevent accidents and health hazards, especially in difficult-to-access and hazardous environments, such as contaminated areas,” explains engineer Janko Petereit, head of the RIG Large-Scale Robotics Laboratory at Fraunhofer IOSB. Other potential applications include the construction and agricultural sectors.
At the sidelines of the conference in Berlin, interested parties were able to communicate with the autonomous 24-ton excavator ALICE on the grounds of the Fraunhofer IOSB in Karlsruhe, give it orders to recover barrels and monitor the execution using live images from the sensors built into the excavator.
