Tomonari Furukawa is leading the Tech engineering team^
The 2010 Multi-Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC) scheduled for November in Australia gives teams the task of building squads of autonomous ground robots that will coordinate, plan, and execute a series of timed maneuvers, including hunting objects, classifying and responding to simulated threats, and mapping diverse terrains at a field competition in Australia late this year.
Among the specific tasks: Differentiate friendly non-targets from enemy targets, and shoot lasers at and jam the communications of the latter. The top three winners will get cash prizes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the chance to work with Australian and United States defense agencies to develop their robotic designs that one day may work beside soldiers in future wars.
The American unit is the core ground robotics development agency for the U.S. Department of Defense. “We’ll have multiple small fully autonomous ground vehicles working together,” says project team member Dennis Hong, director of RoMeLa and an associate professor with the Virginia Tech mechanical engineering department. “There’s never been anything like this.”
Leading the team, which includes graduate and undergraduate students, is Tomonari Furukawa, an associate professor of mechanical engineering with Virginia Tech’s Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville. Furukawa has experience with unmanned ground and air vehicles.
Ten international teams are part of the MAGIC competition, culled from 23 proposals. Chiba University in Japan, the University of New South Wales in Australia, and America’s Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, and Cornell University are among the competitors.
Says Furukawa, “The multidisciplinary approach to both the team members and the faculty advisers give our team an extra edge. Dennis Hong’s experience in the DARPA Urban Challenge is invaluable, and his success as a leader in robotics research not only is confidence-building for our students, but also is extremely helpful as we try to best a very competitive slate of competitors.”
Organizers have provided $50,000 in seed money and there is an additional $20,000 from Virginia Center for Autonomous Systems. The mission will be based on a treasure hunt, with some target objects being stationary, while others will be mobile. The team, thus far, plans to re-engineer several high-end remote-controlled trucks and tanks for autonomous operation.
(From press release.)
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