UC Riverside Team is developing a navigation system that uses existing cellular signals, not GPS, and will support autonomous vehicle development

Swarms of drones will help farmers map weeds in their fields and improve crop yields. This is the promise of an ECHORD++ funded research project called ‘SAGA: Swarm Robotics for Agricultural Applications’. The project will deliver a swarm of drones programmed to monitor a field and, via on-board machine vision, precisely map the presence of weeds among crops.

Additionally, the drones attract each another at weed-infested areas, allowing them to inspect only those areas accurately, similar to how swarms of bees forage the most profitable flower patches. In this way, the planning of weed control activities can be limited to high-priority areas, generating savings at the same time as increasing productivity.

Romy Mueller interviews Raheeb Muzaffar who has developed a framework that improves the transmission of videos between moving drones and mobile devices at ground level.

After the devastating earthquake in Amatrice, Italy, on August 24th, the Vigili del Fuoco (Italian fire brigade) requested assistance from the TRADR (Long-Term Human-Robot Teaming for Robot-Assisted Disaster Response) project (EU FP7 framework, grant No. 60963). TRADR deployed two Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to assist the post-earthquake response in Amatrice.

The UNEXMIN project (Underwater Explorer for Flooded Mines) started February 2016. It is an EU-funded project, from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Luís Lopes, from the La Palma Research Centre, interviews project coordinator Norbert Zajzon to discuss the past, present and future for UNEXMIN.

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Fredrik Gustafsson, Professor in Sensor Informatics at Department of Electrical Engineering in Linköping University, about an initiative to reduce poaching in a rhino sanctuary in Ngulia, Kenya. Gustafsson discusses how he first became involved in this project, how he has worked with the rangers to develop solutions, and the future of this work.

UPDATE: Only 7 days left to back Sweep! They are now almost 80% funded.

The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is a $7 million competition challenging teams from around the world to build advanced deep-sea underwater robots.

Transcript below.

In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Stefan Williams of the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Marine Systems Group. They discuss the future of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), and a recent expedition where they used multi-session SLAM to map the famous Antikythera Shipwreck (circa 60-80 B.C.), one of the richest ancient wrecks ever discovered.

Monitoring the ocean for pollution, ecology and climate change effects is a costly and elaborate task, especially in a complex area like Venice, with its lagoon, its many channels, cable and pipe infrastructure, industrial areas, harbor, marshland, and mussel farms. An interdisciplinary team of European scientists is breaking new ground in underwater environmental monitoring with the EU-funded subCULTron project. With a budget of 4M Euros, they are developing the world’s largest intelligent underwater monitoring system that coordinates, communicates and collects data autonomously. The first presentation of subCULTron prototypes takes place at EXPO 2015 in Venice on October 15 and 16.

What happens when you mix ancient Bushmen knowledge with the latest in drone technology? Our experiment of joining these two very opposite worlds makes up for a completely new way of counting wildlife. By Matthew Parkan and Sonja Betschart.

This video shows how a robot team can work together to map and navigate toward a goal in an unknown terrain that may change over time. Using an onboard monocular camera, a flying robot first scouts the area, creating both a map of visual features for simultaneous localization and a dense elevation map of the environment. A legged ground robot then localizes itself against the global map, and uses the elevation map to plan a traversable path to a goal.

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, euRathlon is a civilian outdoor robotics competition focused on realistic cooperative disaster response scenarios. In the first day of the trials, aerial, ground and marine robots had to deal with the very real conditions of a demanding coastal environment. Watch the Day One recap video.

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, euRathlon is an outdoor competition design to drive research on cooperative search and rescue response for land, sea and air robots. Previous single-domain euRathlon competitions focussed on land (2013) and sea (2014). This year’s Grand Challenge brings the air, land and sea challenges together. Learn more about the challenge and the participating teams …

Zurich-based robotics company Perspective Robotics this week unveils Fotokite Phi, their first consumer targeted, affordable, accessible, tethered flying camera. The Fotokite Phi is available now for pre-order on Indiegogo for $349 USD.