And what are some of those? What are some of the unsolved problems that are the most exciting to you?īrendan Englot: Well, um, right now I would say in our, in our region of the US in particular, you know, I I’ve spent most of my career working in the Northeastern United States. Cuz there are still so many unsolved problem. I, I think it’s a very exciting space to be working in. Is really challenging, but, but it’s also really fun. How much, you know, uh, how much power are you going to need and how do you bring the required resources with you? Um, even things as simple as being able to see your laptop screen, you know, uh, making sure that you can manage your exposure to the elements, uh, work comfortably and productively and manage all of those conditions of, uh, of the outdoor environment. And, uh, trying to figure out, I guess probably the most challenging thing is figuring out what is the perfect ground control station, you know, to give you everything that you need on the field experiment site, um, laptops, you know, computationally, uh, power wise, you know, you may not be in a location that has plugin power. So, um, being well prepared for that, I guess, is as much of a, uh, science as, as doing the research itself. So, uh, you know, just every, every hour of data that you can get under those conditions in the field that will really be helpful, uh, to support your further, further research, um, is, is precious. Um, we really only get to observe those true conditions when we’re in the field and that time comes at, uh, it’s very precious time when all the conditions are cooperating, when you have the right tides, the right weather, um, and, uh, you know, and everything’s able to run smoothly and you can learn from all of the data that you’re gathering. Even then, uh, we, we work a lot with acoustic, uh, perceptual and navigation sensors, and the performance of those sensors is different. Um, we have access to a water tank where we can try to do that. You’ve tested them in the lab and they work perfectly, and you’ll always encounter some unique, uh, combination of circumstances in the field that, that, um, Shines a light on new failure modes.Īnd, um, so trying to imagine every failure mode possible and be prepared for it is one of the biggest challenges I think, of, of field robotics and getting the most out of the time you spend in the field, um, with underwater robots, it’s especially challenging because it’s hard to practice what you’re doing, um, and create the same conditions in the lab.

Um, It it’s a humbling experience to take your systems out into the field that have, you know, you’ve tested in simulation and worked perfectly. Lilly: So as a field robotics researcher, can you talk a little bit about the challenges, both technically in the actual research elements and sort of logistically of doing field robotics?īrendan Englot: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So across both of those domains, we’re really interested in perception and decision making, and we would like to improve the situational awareness of these robots and also improve the intelligence and the reliability of their decision making. They may not have a very structured environment where it’s obvious, uh, which areas of the environment are traversable. And so they may not have, uh, a reliable position fix. They might have to go off road, underground, indoors, and outdoors. Um, we also, uh, study ground robotics and we think about many instances in which ground robots might be GPS denied. Um, our work also, uh, encompasses other types of platforms. We would really like to be able to equip mobile underwater robots with the perceptual and decision making capabilities needed to operate reliably in cluttered underwater environments, where they have to operate in close proximity to other, uh, other structures or other robots. And self-reliance in, uh, challenging field environments.Īnd in particular, um, one of the, the toughest environments that we focus on is, uh, underwater.

My research lab, which has, I guess, been in existence for almost eight years now, um, is called the robust field autonomy lab, which is kind of, um, an aspirational name, reflecting the fact that we would like mobile robotic systems to achieve robust levels of, of autonomy. And can you tell us a little bit about your lab group and what sort of research you’re working on or what sort of classes you’re teaching, anything like that?īrendan Englot: Yeah, certainly, certainly. I’m an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of technology. Would you mind introducing yourself?īrendan Englot: Sure. Lilly: Hi, welcome to the Robohub podcast.

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