PackBot's X-Ray Vision: The Daredevil Project

iRobot roboticist Brian Yamauchi is at it again, working on an ultra-wide-band (UWB) radar vision system for unmanned ground robots like iRobot's PackBot so that they can navigate and see objects in difficult terrain -- like forests, tall grass and jungles -- or in adverse weather -- like rain, snow and dust. The Army-funded research is called Project Daredevil.

I've posted about Brian's web page before, which has some cool videos of a flying PackBot, etc. from 2003 and his work leading the Wayfarer Project, which developed an add-on for PackBot that allows it to autonomously map out its surroundings using lasers.

Project Daredevil has had promising results, according to Yamauchi and the pics at his site are impressive. You could see this having some integration with a variety of robotic applications down the road. Yamauchi is also working with Carnegie Mellon on Project Sagittarius, which aims to coordinate ground and air robots in a search for people trying to hide. Very sci-fi, that one, with obvious (and possibly scary?) uses. Makes me think of Stephen King's "The Running Man" or "The Terminator." There'll be nowhere to hide once a swarm of robots are after you and triangulating your position.

Brian also had worked on "Team Scorpion," the Raytheon-led team that sought to compete in the DARPA Urban Challenge but apparently failed to qualify (a tad embarassing).