Raven Nest Project Abstract
With the great advancement of robotic field in recent years, usages and applications of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and UGVs (Unmanned Ground Vehicles) is also increased with great momentum. Autonomous Robots not only used in academic or military applications but also used in commercial usage as a hobby device or a delivery device.
Surveillance and aerial mapping are examples for the major fields which autonomous robots are used commonly. These robots -especially UAVs- are frequently used in surveillance and aerial mapping missions which are part of some search and rescue missions, military operations or homeland security operations. However since UAVs’ aerial surveillance much more effective than UGVs’ ground surveillance, UAVs are mostly preferred for surveillance, imaging or mapping missions. Although small-scale remote controlled UAVs (Quadcopters etc.) had many different advantages for these missions, their limited batteries and limited flight duration which is result of these limited batteries are the main handicaps for small-scale UAVs. These disadvantages not only causing inefficiency on missions that mentioned before but also becoming one of the main setbacks for increasing usage of UAVs.
Project RAVEN NEST is a project which will create a symbiotic multi-robot system for minimizing main disadvantages of UGVs and UAVs on mentioned missions and use this system in different scenarios. With this project, it is aimed that bringing efficient solutions to the problems which is caused by UGVs and UAVs’ limited properties.
Although there are studies about symbiotic multi-robot systems, number of these academic studies are very few and usage of these systems in the industry is much lower than that. With this project it is aimed that creating both theoretical and practical study for this new research area of robotic and Artificial Intelligence fields.
This project targeting that bringing solutions to problems which caused by limited charge capacities and flight durations of small-scale UAVs or limited viewpoints of UGVs by solving them with symbiotic system in three main scenarios which they are also have some sub-scenarios.