Uncrewed Systems Technology 049 - April/May 2023

70 Insight | UGVs appropriate mixing. A 95 cm-wide squeegee is mounted at the back for then scrubbing with the cleaning fluid, applying 95 kg of downward pressure for a thorough wipe – doing away with the ‘elbow grease’ gap that some potential customers have cited as a barrier to automating cleaning work. The R12 Rex CS measures about 1715 x 938 x 1473 mm and weighs 748 kg when full of cleaning fluids or 585 kg when emptied for transport. It is powered by a 250 Ah battery and runs for up to 4.5 hours between charges, with 3.5 hours as an estimated minimum, its maximum cleaning speed being 5 kph. Although a manual override is available, the UGV typically cleans and navigates autonomously, with onboard 3D SLAM powered by a Lidar with a 200 m range to enable real-time path planning, obstacle avoidance and localisation without needing GNSS (given its indoor operating environment). As a further aid to autonomy, LionsBot can provide an automated battery charging and cleaning fluid refill station, with an automatic return function to enable the R12 to navigate to its station at the end of each cleaning cycle (with charging taking about 8 hours). Batteries can also be manually swapped via a tray at the base of the vehicle. Security operations Eurolink Systems has a history of developing and providing UGVs for security purposes, with its Leopardo wheeled and tracked UGVs having been supplied to the Italian army for counter- IED operations in Afghanistan about 8 years ago. “Around 2014, the Italian military approached us quite unexpectedly with a list of capability requirements for a UGV,” says Pietro Lapiana, president of Eurolink Systems. “We were nonplussed but we agreed and began work from a blank sheet, and around 9 months later we delivered the first units.” More recently, the company has begun delving into more advanced robotics, also for security users. Specifically, it has been supplying its Doberbot UGV to Italian private security forces to enhance their capabilities in a number of ways. To do so it has analysed police requirements and used the data from that to inform the development of its algorithms. The Doberbot is a four-legged UGV incorporating 12 servo actuators to achieve locomotion, as well as two HD depth cameras for sensing and navigation, a Lidar for environmental mapping, and an Intel CPU as its main computer. The system is capable of operating at 5.4 kph and running at up to 7 kph, as well as walking up or down stairs and rubble. “Customers in Italy asked us to configure the Doberbot to act as a companion system to officers, principally out of a fear that if a police officer were to become embroiled in a fight with violent offenders and die, no-one would know, because no- one would see,” explains Lapiana. “To that end, we engineered our computer vision algorithms for some abilities beyond just obstacle avoidance. It can now recognise things in the visual data that the Doberbot would capture, such as if there’s a gun, or if people are standing up or on the ground. “And if firearms or potentially wounded people are identified, it can transmit an emergency alert to the police command & control centre, to notify them that an officer has a problem.” The system can also be trained to recognise voice or hand commands for situations outside autonomous following, where operating a GCS is unsafe or cumbersome, and this can be paired with a facial recognition system to ensure the Doberbot obeys its ‘master’. “For unsafe operations where a Doberbot might need to scout ahead intelligently through a building, we’ve also trained its computer vision to recognise doors and whether they are open or shut, as well as recognising when something has changed in a scene it has previously surveyed,” says Enrico Remiddi, Eurolink’s chief strategy officer. “For example, if it revisits a room where there was a computer, and the computer has been removed, it will form a box around the space where it was to highlight it for operators and analysts watching its feed.” Although the Doberbot is not a wholly original design – it uses an AlienGo quadrupedal robot from Unitree Robotics as its substrate – its AI April/May 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The LionsBot R12 Rex CS uses 3D SLAM for GNSS-free indoor navigation as well as obstacle avoidance as it sweeps and scrubs floors (Courtesy of LionsBot)