Deep Robotics Co, a specialist in the development and industrial application of quadrupedal robots, has announced that a team of five Jueying X20 quadrupedal robots has completed a trial involving autonomous collaborative investigation of an unknown environment.
The trial saw the robot dog team search the environment through eight different scenarios, which saw the bots work collaboratively to retrieve inflammable and explosive items, as well as rescue injured people.
To support the training, each of the five X20 robots were fitted with a high-resolution panoramic camera, along with a lidar and mesh network to help them sense and understand their surroundings. From here, the robots then coordinated with each other to search different parts of the environment and complete a series of tasks.
“Teams working on emergency searches or for site exploration commonly face challenges such as insufficient site data and risks to their personal safety,” said Wei Tang, head of algorithm engineering at Deep Robotics.
“That’s where these robots can provide valuable assistance. The success of this trial paves the way for the future adoption of quadrupedal robots in difficult and high-risk environments, supporting or replacing humans in doing life-threatening tasks, while increasing the speed and accuracy during emergency rescue operations.”
What’s more, the robotic systems used laser technology for a synchronous mapping and positioning algorithm, through which the location environment is mapped. In turn, each bot is independently allocated different exploration areas to search autonomously and targets in real time.
Deep Robotics’ algorithm for autonomous coordinated multi-robot exploration was key to the success of the trial and was developed to enable highly efficient data traffic flow and movement between the five X20 robots. This helps them choose efficient paths and develop alternative routes autonomously.
The X20 robot dog is the most recent addition to Deep Robotics’ Jueying series, which was designed to cater to industrial use cases. The tasks it undertakes include power inspections, emergency rescues, public safety inspections, tunnel, mining and industrial site inspections and construction site exploration.
