To mark the end of the five years UDRC
(University Defence Research Centres) Signal Processing in a Networked
Battlespace jointly funded by EPSRC and Dstl, a final showcase event was organised
and helped on 21st February, 2018. It was taking place in Garrison
theatre at Tidworth, and about 200 people attended with the Chief Scientific
Advisor of the UK Ministry of Defence Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte. As a core
team of the UDRC, our demonstration about autonomous search of chemical hazard
release using a robot was selected as one of the highlights. Actually it was
put on the central stage in the largest room, the theatre (see Figure 1). In
the demo, without any knowledge, the cognitive search algorithm installed on a
ground moving vehicle is able to drive the vehicle moving towards the sources
based on the chemical sensor readings while estimating key parameters related
to the release (e.g. location and release rate) and environment conditions
(e.g. wind direction and speed). Different from the demo in our lab, LIDAR is
used for localisation for the robot. The experiments have been repeated for 6
times with all success. This clearly demonstrated the robustness and
reliability of our systems. Three members of our lab, Prof Wen-Hua Chen and to
PhD students Michael Hutchinson and Pawel Ladosz, participated this event.
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