Heterogeneous teams of unmanned ground and aerial robots for reconnaissance and surveillance - a field experiment

The paper presents the results of cooperative work done by three different research institutions. The cooperation concluded in a large field experiment with six heterogeneous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is shown, that it is possible to do reconnaissance and surveillance, namely detection of pedestrians and vehicles, with an autonomous multi-robot system under real world conditions. The participants were all using different robotic middlewares and interfaces to the graphical user interface. Hence, it has been agreed to use common interfaces and standards for communication. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is used as a communication layer, supported by commercially available 3G mobile radio communication for large operating distances. A standardized markup language has been used for the description of tasks and feedback from the robots to the control station. Moreover, the applied UGV control strategies and the implemented approach for detection, tracking and classification are presented. The concluding field test showed that it is possible to realize a multi-robot system of dynamic size, and that such teams are well-suited to perform reconnaissance and surveillance without constant observation by a human operator.