Robotics for DDD Applications

Level: CS791
Overview: The goal of the course "Robotics for DDD Applications" (DDD standing for Dull, Dirty and Dangerous) is to introduce students into the challenges and specific aspects of designing and implementing robotic systems capable of addressing challenging and often dangerous applications. Of particular focus is robotics for a) monitoring, inspection and maintenance activities in nuclear sites, mining and vessel environments, as well as b) robotics for work-task execution in construction sites, mines and nuclear facilities. The course lectures will cover topics related to a) robot design, b) state estimation, c) control, as well as d) mission-specific sensing (namely radiation detection) and multi-modal map fusion.

The course is divided into the following sections:

Section 1: Nuclearized Robotics
Section 2: Robotics in Mining
Section 3: Construction Robotics
Section 4: Vessel Inspection Robotics
Section 5: Application-specific Robot Design

For each section, the course flow contains corresponding lectures, paper presentations from students, and discussions based on specific hardware/software implementations.

Student projects:
Significant component of the course load will be related with the accomplishment of a semester-long project with one intermediate presentation and a final report and presentation. Indicative project examples include

Robotized sensing for gamma spectroscopy
Robot-crawler design for navigation in tunnel-like facilities
Autonomous robotic radiation source localization.
Alpha radiation mapping using ground robots.
Underground mine inspection and mapping.
Change detection for mine environments.
Automated robotic excavation.
Construction process assessment using aerial robots exploiting CAD models and real-time 3D data.
Semantic classification for vessel inspection tasks.
Change detection for vessel inspection tasks.

The course will be provided first time from Fall 2017. Interesting students please contact us at kalexis@unr.edu

Lectures:

Monday - Wednesday: 5.30-6.45pm, SEM201

Grading:

1000% - Student Project during the whole semester

Study links

• TBA

Open-Source Code

• TBA