Facilities

Autonomous Robots and Systems Laboratory (Duke Hall, Room 370)

The ARSL is a lab space dedicated to the fabrication, integration, and testing of robotic systems and related control algorithms. The lab has several workbenches with a variety of fabrication tools (e.g., benchtop drill press, bandsaw, 3D printer, power and hand tools), electronics equipment (DC power supplies, oscilloscopes, multimeters, soldering station, etc.), and assorted robotic sensors, communication/radio equipment, micro-controllers, autopilots, and embedded computers. A high-performance Linux workstation is available for simulation and data analysis (AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-core CPU, 2.9 GHz, 256 GB RAM).

Multi-vehicle Marine Robotics Testbed (BATT CAVE Research Building, Room 124)

The marine robotics testbed is a custom-built 5,000 gallon water tank that is instrumented with a positioning and communication system to control a fleet of miniaturized unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The facility supports controlled laboratory experiments investigating cooperative control of multi-vehicle systems, bio-inspired robotics, and testing of subsystems/components of larger (outdoor) marine robots.

Robotic Platforms

The ARSL has several off-the-shelf and custom-built air, ground, and marine robots, including:

  • Seafloor Systems Hydrone USV
  • Two custom-built autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) with various sensor options, including a single-beam echo sounder (Blue Robotics Ping), low-cost side-scan sonar (Humminbird Helix 9 with SARHAWK), and YSI EXO2 Multiparameter Water Quality Sonde (dissolved oxygen, algae, turbidity, temperature)
  • Clearpath robotics Jackal (LiDAR, stereo cameras, and Intel Realsense)
  • Blue Robotics ROV
  • Three QAV 500 V2 custom-built quadrotor drones with Trisonica mini 3-axis anemometers
  • MiniUUV: a custom-built miniature underwater vehicle
  • Fixed-wing GT Zohd Talon with gimbaled RGB camera
  • Swarm of indoor Crazyflie 2.0 drones