Description

The ranger is responsible for entering the target area and carrying out the specific goals of the mission. Since different missions will require different capabilities, the ranger can be easily and quickly reconfigured before the robots are deployed. Once deployed, the rangers are usually used in cooperation with other rangers and several scouts in the target area as well as the control center. Each ranger will have its own team of scouts with which it deploys and controls to achieve the mission objectives.

The ranger has fairly powerful onboard processing capabilities. Our rangers have Intel Pentium processor-based computers in them that can be used to control the scouts and process the data gathered by their sensory equipment. Localization and position sensing is accomplished through the use of GPS, magnetometers, tilt-meters and accelerometers. Each ranger also possesses a medium range communications array that allows it to share information with additional rangers in the field as well as the control center. In general, the rangers could consist of any sturdy terrestrial or aquatic autonomous mobile platform which will have an effective range of several kilometers. Depending on the kind of terrain that the ranger will be expected to traverse, different locomotion units could be used to optimize performance.

The primary strength of the ranger is its ability to be reconfigured for the specific mission. Depending on the mission particulars, each ranger can be quiclky outfitted with a set of hardware units that augment its capabilities. These modular units could be additional sensors, a more powerful communication array, additional CPU power, vision processors, and other specialized computational resources. Actuator units could be added to give the rangers the ability to transport and deliver objects, such as scouts, or explosives, as well as the ability to capture and retrieve items. More power supplies could be added to provide additional range and staying power to the ranger.

Capabilities

Variations

Demos

Images

Publications

Sascha A. Stoeter, Frédéric Le Mauff, Nikolaos P. Papanikolopoulos. "Real-time Door Detection in Cluttered Environments." Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, Rio, Greece, pp. 187-192, July 2000.(ps)