ELROB 2016

The Austrian Armed Forces form the armed power of the Republic of Austria. Their Commander-in-Chief is the Austrian Federal President, while the Minister of Defence and Sports exercises his power of supreme command by way of his offices and subordinated commanders. In times of peace, the Army comprises professional soldiers, further employees and conscripts. The task force organisation also includes militia soldiers. The Armed Forces are divided into the air force, landbased and special forces. As a member nation of many international organisations, Austria is contributing to joint international peace keeping effort. Since 1960, more than 100,000 Austrian troops and civilian helpers have been participating in more than 50 international peace support and humanitarian missions. Since the end of the Cold War the number of missions has been growing rapidly. In addition to classical peace-keeping or peace support operations there is now a growing number of humanitarian and disaster relief operations to be taken care of.

EOD COE is one of the tools of the NATO Supreme Allied Command for Transformation aiming to improve military capabilities, value and efficiency throughout the Alliance and for the benefit of NATO partners. It deals with the whole EOD/IEDD spectrum as advise, expertise, support, EOD info management and EOD tasks. Its ambition is to become a multinational hub for EOD/IEDD issues, bearing on four pillars (education and training, technology management doctrine and standardization, lessons learned) likewise to provide support to NATO operations and transformation efforts with EOD expertise and assist in development of NATO wide EOD/IEDD tactics, techniques and procedures while remaining current in technology development as well as to improve relations, interoperability and a practical cooperation with partners, NATO command elements, member countries and international organization in the area of EOD.

The Cognitive Mobile Systems Department of the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE is actively researching in the area of unmanned systems for more than 20 years. Our main expertise is the development and evaluation of complex human-robot systems. The main focus is on RSTA and CBRNE-reconnaissance missions using heterogeneous multi-robot systems. Working with such multi-robot systems is a competitive task for the operator. Even a single robot utilizes several different sensors and provides a high degree of mobility, which all need to be controlled by the operator.

CMS approaches this challenge through intelligent assistance functions. The operator is supported by these assistance functionalities on all levels, ranging from navigating a single robot to complex planning problems of multi-robot systems. Our key skill is the development of innovative tools for human-robot interaction and cooperation. For this purpose new developments are constantly integrated in experimental systems and evaluated in co-operation with security authorities and organizations as well as the military.

This NATO Research Task Group on „Standards Promoting Interoperability for Coalition UGVs“ validates UGV standards issued by the previous RTG on „Applied Interoperability and Autonomy for Military Unmanned Systems“. The specified STANAGs and other standards will be implemented on physical robots. The mission goal is the acquisition of ISR data and the storage and publication of this data such that it is available to coalition members. The RTG will reach these objectives via a staged process, where each demonstration stage builds upon the previous. The stages include the definition of the ISR mission, the implementation of the standards, their implementation and test on a single physical robot, and finally an implementation and test within a coalition environment. The result will emerge in a „Concept Capability Demonstrator“ that shows the interoperability between the involved systems.

Currently, the following nations are involved in this activity: Germany, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Poland and Finland.

European Robotics is a non-profit organization, which aims to bridge the gap between users‘ requests, industry activities and current research in the field of Hazardous Materials Incident Response Operations (HAZOPER) – all with a special focus on ground robotics. Any interested party is invited to take part and contribute. All activities of European Robotics are carried out on a purely honorary and complimentary basis.

To promote new and future-oriented innovations, European Robotics has been the scientific co-organiser of the European Land-Robot Trials (ELROB) since the foundation if this robotic competition in the year 2006. On the one hand, members of European Robotics always play an active part in the scenario and task design. On the other hand, European Robotics awards special Innovation Prizes for the ELROB participants. The purpose of these prizes is to support new ways of solving the challenges at hand and to reward impressive and novel scientific solutions as well as their practical implementations and integrations in robust and functioning robot systems usable for the HAZOPER domain.

European Robotics is a co-operation between representatives of potential end-users, industry and smaller manufacturers, and the research community.