Finalist in the MAGIC UGV Battle Challenge

Six high-tech teams from the U.S., Turkey, Japan and Australia have made it to the finals of the International Multi-Autonomous Ground-robotics International Challenge MAGIC 2010. The aim is to develop the next generation of fully autonomous robots that could undertake dangerous missions on the future battlefield.
The six finalists will compete at the Royal Showground in Adelaide, South Australia in November.

The six teams are: Cappadocia (Turkey), Chiba (Japan), Magician (Australia), RASR (USA), Team Michigan (USA), and University of Pennsylvania (USA).

All teams are at the forefront of robotics technology and have survived a rigorous assessment and elimination process against six other semi-finalist teams. The teams performed a range of activities to demonstrate certain capabilities including the ability to operate autonomously and to map their surroundings digitally.

They have now a few weeks to fine-tune their concepts for the grand final challenge when they will be required to field at least three robots and accomplish a complex task involving mapping and identification of threats while demonstrating a high level of autonomy between the robots.  

MAGIC is a joint initiative of Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation and the U.S. Department of Defense. The aim is to develop teams of robots which can operate autonomously on the battlefield in dangerous situations, keeping soldiers out of harm’s way.

€ 20 million for Border Protection Robots

TALOS is an international research project co-funded from EU 7th Framework Programme funds in Security priority. The main objective of TALOS project is to develop and field test the innovative concept of a mobile, autonomous system for protecting European land borders. The conventional border protection systems are based mainly on expensive ground facilities installed along the entire length of the border complemented by human patrols. The system developed within the TALOS project will be more versatile, efficient, flexible and cost effective.

The complete system applies both aerial and ground unmanned vehicles, supervised by command and control centre. The ground platforms will be both the watching stations and the first reaction patrols, which will inform the Control and Command Centre and an intruder about her/his situation, and will undertake the proper measures to stop the illegal action almost autonomously with supervision of border guard officers.

The most important features of the system are scalability, autonomous operation, mobility, adaptability and modular construction. Through its flexibility it will be easy to adjust the system to the local requirements such as border length and topographic conditions. Important role in the project is given to Border Guards from countries with EU external land border in order to tailor system to end user needs and requirements.

TALOS project consortium has adequate resources to face the challenge. The system will be developed by experts working for 14 institutions from 8 EU member states (Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Poland, Romania, Spain) as well as 1 EU candidate (Turkey) and 1 associated country (Israel). Wide range of the necessary competencies has been ensured by composing the consortium of industrial companies, research institutions, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and a technical university. Project budget sums up to about 20 million Euro, 13 million of which has been granted by the EC.

TALOS video animation

US $ 3.84 Million SUGV contract for Boeing and iRobot

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] and partner iRobot Corp. [NASDAQ: IRBT] announced Oct 10, that they have received an initial contract with the U.S. Air Force to provide Small Unmanned Ground Vehicles (SUGV) to its Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team. The contract calls for up to 70 model 310 SUGV robots, with an initial value of $3.84 million. The Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract will run through September 2012.
Boeing and iRobot developed the SUGV family of vehicles under a strategic alliance that began in 2007. It is designed to give warfighters real-time awareness of critical situations and to allow them to complete missions from safe standoff distances. It is ideal for a variety of mission types, including EOD, route clearance and reconnaissance.

As the prime contractor, Boeing provides program management, contracts, and quality-control support from offices in Huntsville. iRobot is responsible for engineering, manufacturing, training and logistics services, with the majority of work conducted in Bedford, Mass.

First Automatic Driving in Real City Traffic

Today for the first time, an automatic vehicle was driving in everyday city traffic in Braunschweig, Germany.  On Braunschweig’s two-lane ring road, the research vehicle “Leonie” is able to conduct challenging driving maneuvers at speeds up to 60 km/h: lane keeping, behavior at intersections, avoiding obstacles, and adjusting distances and speeds to the flowing traffic. 


The research project „Stadtpilot“ is the only research project worldwide so far that realizes automatic driving in real city traffic. Already in 2007, the TU Braunschweig participated successfully in the DARPA Urban Challenge, the worldwide leading competition for autonomous vehicles: with the 2006 VW Passat Variant “Caroline”, the team CarOLO was in the finals as one of 11 teams out of the initial 89. Based on these experiences, an interdisciplinary team from three different faculties has now developed the follow-up “Leonie”.
Leonie is a VW Passat station wagon, 2.0 TDI. With satellite positioning the vehicle can calculate its position in the traffic. Thanks to various laser scanners and radar sensors, Leonie can perceive its environment continuously and process the data. 
(Source/Image: TU Brainschweig)


One of the first truly autonomous cars was the VaMP driverless car along with its twin vehicle, the VITA-2. Developed by the team of Ernst Dickmanns at the Bundeswehr University of Munich and Mercedes Benz as part of the ECU EUREKA Prometheus Project on autonomous vehicles (1987-1995). VaMP was able to drive in heavy traffic for long distances without human intervention, using computer vision to recognize rapidly moving obstacles such as other cars, and automatically avoid and pass them. 

$700 Million for Military Robots

Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle(SUGV) have fast grown into a multibillion-dollar business. Massachusetts company iRobot has already delivered around 2,700 robots to militaries around the world. Some of those were part of a December 2007, $300 million U.S. Defense Department contract that iRobot won after prevailing over an upstart that purloined its technology. A second Massachusetts firm, Foster-Miller, won a contract in 2008 for another $400 million to supply thousands of its TALON robots. Both iRobot's PackBot and Foster-Miller's TALON are mostly used to locate and detonate improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which have proved to be one of the Taliban's deadliest weapons.