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| Students from the autonomous robotics team test an aerial drone on UVA’s Milton Field in preparation for an international robotic competition |
Within the next
decade, travelers checking into hotels might hand their luggage to robot
bellhops. Drivers riding down a street might see human construction
foremen managing groups of robots laying bricks or pouring building
foundations. Robots have the potential to do the heavy lifting and free
up humans to take on other job duties for which they may be better
suited.
“I can also see robots helping with problems that would be hazardous for humans, like fixing the Fukushima power plant in my home country of Japan,” predicted Tomonari Furukawa, a well-known robotics researcher, Zinn Faculty Scholar and newly minted professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia. “Or, robots could build structures in no-oxygen settings like the moon or the International Space Station, or someday even Mars...
“I think most people are familiar with ground or aerial robots, or drones, but they are really only familiar with the ones that are piloted by remote control,” said Brita Lyons, a junior mechanical engineering major at Virginia Tech. “What we do at the lab is incredibly hard. We try to make a drone behave like it’s being piloted, but it’s moving and making choices autonomously – all through design and programming.”...
In addition to the automation requirements, the challenges simulate demanding, real-life scenarios in which robots could be enlisted to do dangerous jobs and protect humans. The complexities of the competition challenges indicate the level of sophisticated research that Furukawa and his students have been doing.
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Source: UVA Today
