Abstract
In recent years the range of robotics platforms available for research and development has increased dramatically. Despite this, there are areas and applications which are not currently well served by the existing available platforms. Many of them are designed for indoor use; the range of outdoor and off-road robotics platforms is less diverse and few address the issue of deployment in hazardous weather conditions and integrate a suitable sensor suite. In addition almost all of the commercially available Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) are unsuitable for deployment on delicate surfaces. Given the widespread use of manicured grass within the built environment and agriculture across the Western world, this severely limits where they can be deployed and the tasks that can be accomplished. This paper introduces the design principles of a suitable autonomous vehicle. Hulk is built from a commercial zero-turn mower modified for fly-by-wire operation and equipped with a full sensor suite and computing payload. To enable remote, long-term autonomy in diverse environments, several layers of redundant safety systems were designed and installed and the entire assembly made weatherproof.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Clearpath Robotics Inc.: https://www.clearpathrobotics.com.
- 2.
Jackal platform: https://bit.ly/2I3JzRP.
- 3.
Moose platform: https://bit.ly/2uIrgc7.
- 4.
Mean Green Mowers: SK-48 Stalker: https://meangreenproducts.com/sk48-stalker/.
- 5.
CTS350-X Navtech scanning radar: https://bit.ly/2Ur5yIO.
- 6.
Bumblebee2 camera: https://bit.ly/2KmT0h5.
- 7.
Chameleon cameras: https://bit.ly/2D2Zrjt.
- 8.
Velodine HDL-32E: https://velodynelidar.com/hdl-32e.html.
- 9.
Hokuyo UAM-05LP-T301: https://bit.ly/2I8C1gI.
- 10.
3DM-GX4-45 Microstrain inertial sensor: https://bit.ly/2Iouh9M.
- 11.
E-Stop switches: https://www.schneider-electric.com/en/search/XB4BS8444.
- 12.
Tyro Indus 1S/Gemini: https://bit.ly/2Z1mC79.
- 13.
Brainbox Ethernet I/O module: http://www.brainboxes.com/ethernet-io-module.
References
ISO 12100:2010.: International Organization for Standardization: Safety of Machinery—General Principles for Design. Risk Assessment and Risk Reduction. ISO (2010)
ISO 13849-1:2015: International Organization for Standardization: Safety of Machinery—Safety-related Parts of Control Systems—Part 1: General Principles for Design. ISO (2015)
ISO 13850:2015: International Organization for Standardization: Safety of Machinery—Emergency Stop Function. Principles for design. ISO (2015)
Aldera, R., De Martini, D., Gadd, M., Newman, P.: Fast radar motion estimation with a learnt focus of attention using weak supervision. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2019
Berczi, L.-P., Posner, I., Barfoot, T.D.: Learning to assess terrain from human demonstration using an introspective gaussian-process classifier. In: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 3178–3185. IEEE (2015)
Cen, S., Newman, P.: Precise ego-motion estimation with millimeter-wave radar under diverse and challenging conditions. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2018
Gadd, M., Newman, P.: The Data Market: Policies for Decentralised Visual Localisation. ArXiv e-prints, Jan 2018
Kydd, K., Macrez, S., Pourcel, P., et al.: Autonomous robot for gas and oil sites. In: SPE Offshore Europe Conference and Exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers (2015)
Maddern, W., Pascoe, G., Linegar, C., Newman, P.: 1 year, 1000 km: the Oxford robotcar dataset. Int. J. Robot. Res. 36(1), 3–15 (2017)
Nagatani, K., Endo, D., Watanabe, A., Koyanagi, E.: Design and development of explosion-proof tracked vehicle for inspection of offshore oil plant. In: Field and Service Robotics, pp. 531–544. Springer (2018)
Nistér, D., Naroditsky, O., Bergen, J.: Visual odometry for ground vehicle applications. J. Field Robot. 23(1), 3–20 (2006)
Peters, A.: Safety of the LUTZ pathfinder automated vehicle. In: Proceedings 22nd ITS World Congress, Bordeaux, France. ERTICO (ITS Europe) (2015)
Porav, H., Bruls, T., Newman, P.: I can see clearly now: image restoration via de-raining. CoRR, abs/1901.00893 (2019)
Porav, H., Maddern, W., Newman, P.: Adversarial training for adverse conditions: robust metric localisation using appearance transfer. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 1011–1018. IEEE (2018)
Scholtz, J.C.: Human-robot interactions: creating synergistic cyber forces, pp. 177–184 (2002)
Simpson, R., Cullip, J., Revell, J.: The cheddar gorge data set. Technical Report, BAE Systems (Operations) Limited, UK (2011)
Smith, M., Baldwin, I., Churchill, W., Paul, R., Newman, P.: The new college vision and laser data set. Int. J. Robot. Res. 28(5), 595–599 (2009)
Wise, M., Ferguson, M., King, D., Diehr, E., Dymesich, D.: Fetch & Freight: Standard Platforms for Service Robot Applications (2016)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kyberd, S. et al. (2021). The Hulk: Design and Development of a Weather-Proof Vehicle for Long-Term Autonomy in Outdoor Environments. In: Ishigami, G., Yoshida, K. (eds) Field and Service Robotics. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 16. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9460-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9460-1_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-9459-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-9460-1
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)