Autonomously gathering aerial data has many potential applications, from co-scouting with ground robots to providing live field information to dismounted units. The ARL team developed a number of autonomous multirotor capabilities, creating an infrastructure for further work at ARL and at Olin.
The current generation of man portable unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) often pose problems for researchers due to high unit price points and closed development architectures. Each UGV becomes a major investment for a research group and discourages heavy use under harsh field conditions, while closed software environments hinder necessary modifications. The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) approached the 2011-2012 Olin SCOPE Program with these problems in mind and asked the team to produce a man portable autonomous UGV for use as a research platform. The goals o the project focus on the development and production of a low-cost indoor/outdoor UGV that provides a modular interface for the rapid development of cutting edge software and sensor capabilities.
The Boston Engineering SCOPE project is part of a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTR) grant from the Office of Naval Research that is held jointly by Olin College and Boston Engineering. The SCOPE team designed a biometric robot modeled after the tuna fish. The GhostSwimmer is a highly efficient and maneuverable unmanned undersea vehicle developed for a wide variety of missions. The Olin team was primarily responsible for the maneuverability and sensor portions of the robot; Boston Engineering is designing the propulsion system.