The aim of this project is to develop mobile robotic devices capable of operations in inaccessible, harsh, dangerous or contaminated areas. The variability of tasks to be solved is relatively wide, and it will include, among others: facility guarding against intruders or unauthorized people; area guarding for contamination by technology-related substances in solid, liquid or fluent form; area guarding for criminal/terrorist attacks, including CBRN (chemical, biological, radiation, nuclear) threats; and advanced diagnostics of the whole technological process, as well as individual machines leading to intelligent maintenance. The range of environments, where the tasks will be fulfilled, will be also very wide – from factories and warehouses, to surrounding of plants, to disaster areas of all forms. Since mobility and autonomous operation is a vital part of successful solution of abovementioned tasks, great emphasis will be put to autonomous self-localization and navigation in both pre-mapped and previously unknown areas, rescue mission planning, long-term autonomous operation, on-the-fly and on-demand mission re-planning. Most of the missions would not be possible without proper sensing, so it will be also considered and examined. It will include sensing devices for extremely wide range of jobs, including robot position, orientation and proximity sensing, human presence and status detection, dangerous substances detection, but also vibro-diagnostics, etc. One of the key concepts will be integration of more tasks (and also more kinds of sensors) to one robotic platform. So the robots will provide wide variety of jobs in one body without the risk of human harm but also human failure due to stress, fatigue, etc.

Klíčová slova
mobile robot; reconnaissance; hazardous environments