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MP2028^g Used in the First Pairing of Air and Ground Robotic Vehicles for Indoor Search and Rescue Mission Simulation

MicroPilot’s MP2028^g recently attracted a lot of attention from the international artificial intelligence and robotics community. At this year’s RoboCup 2006 the team of Linkoping and Freiburg Universities paired an MP2028^g-flown UAV with a ground robot for the RoboCupRescue component of the competition.

RoboCup, held this year in Bremen, Germany in June, is an international joint project to promote AI, robotics and related fields. RoboCupRescue, a project and competition within RoboCup, is a large-scale-disaster search and rescue simulation challenge using robotic and AI technology.

The Linkoping/Freiburg team paired an MP2028^g-flown micro-helicopter with a ground robot to demonstrate a cooperative scenario in search and rescue. The robotic duo performed a set of indoor maneuvers for several audiences, including competing teams, organizers and other attendees in numerous demonstrations throughout RoboCup2006. With GPS not available indoors for navigation, a computer vision system was used on the ground robot to navigate the autonomous helicopter. A standard, off-the-shelf MP2028^g was flexible enough for the mission. MicroPilot engineers made no modifications for the demonstration.

“As the first demonstration of indoor cooperation between a ground vehicle and an air vehicle,” says Howard Loewen, Chief Technical Officer of MicroPilot, “This is an exciting development in the world of AI and robotics. The contribution this will make to search-and-rescue technology makes it all that much more momentous to the global community.”

Since Linkoping/Freiburg was the only team using flying robots, safety concerns prevented the use of the helicopter, but all competitors, judges and attendees saw the UAV perform in cooperation with the ground robot in demonstrations prior to the event. The MP2028^g performed brilliantly and will surely open doors for future research in this area. Linkoping/Freiburg’s ground robot went on to take first place in the contest.

MicroPilot is the world’s leading manufacturer of miniature autopilots for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and micro aerial vehicles (MAV). We serve over 350 UAV integrators in 49 countries. For reputation, versatility, dependability and innovation, MicroPilot is the world leader in miniature autopilots.

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