Taurob tracker is a mobile robot, manufactured by Taurob GmbH in Austria. It has been originally developed as a remote controlled reconnaissance platform for fire departments. [1] [2] [3] but is currently used also by the military, [4] [5] civil-defense units, universities [6] and the oil and gas industry [7] around the world.
Since 2013 an ATEX Zone 1 certified variant, called Taurob Tracker Ex is available, which is able to drive in explosive atmospheres safely. [8]
A taurob tracker version with sensors for environments with extreme smoke (e.g. fires in tunnels or subway stations) is currently being developed in the EU funded "SmokeBot" project [9]
| Dimensions | 100 x 58 x 42 cm |
| Weight | 60 kg |
| Payload | 25 kg |
| Operating Distance (Line of sight) | 500 – 1000 m |
| Speed | 7 km/h |
| Temperature Range | -20 °C to +60 °C |
| Battery Endurance | 3 hrs. (driving), 10 hrs. (measuring) |
| Certifications | ATEX, IP 67 |
| Max. Climb Capabilities | 40°, 35 cm obstacles, stairs |
| Arm – Mobility | 4 Degrees of Freedom |
| Arm – Max. Reach | 140 cm |
| Arm – Max. Lifting Capacity | 5 kg fully extended |
Compared to most other mobile robots, the taurob tracker has a unique track geometry which allows it to climb over obstacles with just one pair of tracks. Due this geometry the tracks do not lose their tension when raising or lowering the front wheels. Further advantages include improved traction (thus the name of the robot) on uneven ground and a rapid track exchange mechanism. [11]
In 2016 a taurob tracker platform was used in the RoboCup Rescue League by team Hector. [12]
In 2017 a variant of taurob tracker called "Argonaut" has won the ARGOS Challenge organised by Total Energies. It is the first fully autonomous, ATEX certified mobile inspection robot for Oil and Gas installations. According to Total it will be used on their industrial sites by 2020. [13] [14]
An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history that were programmed to "think" the way biological brains do and meant to have free will. Elmer and Elsie were often labeled as tortoises because of how they were shaped and the manner in which they moved. They were capable of phototaxis which is the movement that occurs in response to light stimulus.
RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition founded in 1996 by a group of university professors. The aim of the competition is to promote robotics and AI research by offering a publicly appealing – but formidable – challenge.
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is the computational problem of constructing or updating a map of an unknown environment while simultaneously keeping track of an agent's location within it. While this initially appears to be a chicken or the egg problem, there are several algorithms known to solve it in, at least approximately, tractable time for certain environments. Popular approximate solution methods include the particle filter, extended Kalman filter, covariance intersection, and GraphSLAM. SLAM algorithms are based on concepts in computational geometry and computer vision, and are used in robot navigation, robotic mapping and odometry for virtual reality or augmented reality.
RoboCup Junior (RCJ), sometimes stylised RobocupJunior, is a division of RoboCup, a not-for-profit robotics organisation. It focuses on education and aims to introduce the larger goals of the RoboCup project to primary and secondary school aged children. Participants compete in one of three main leagues: Soccer, Rescue or Dance. Dance Theatre also exists as a sub-league of Dance, and Premier Rescue is part of the competition in Australia and New Zealand.
A mobile robot is an automatic machine that is capable of locomotion. Mobile robotics is usually considered to be a subfield of robotics and information engineering.
A robot competition is an event where the abilities and characteristics of robots may be tested and assessed. Usually they have to outperform other robots in order to win the competition. Many competitions are for schools but several competitions with professional and hobbyist participants also exist.
Robofest is an autonomous robotics competition for 4th - 12th graders. It is similar to FIRST Lego League (FLL), but while FLL limits the student's robots to Lego Mindstorms robots, Robofest allows the student to use any robotics system, parts, materials, or even custom electronics, in some of the events. Note that FLL students are required to use parts manufactured by Lego only, preventing the use of such aids as string or glue. Another important difference is that Robofest games have UTF components. Students must solve the unveiled tasks and factors within 30 minutes work-time without external help. Lawrence Tech's Robofest was founded by Computer Science Professor Dr. Chan-Jin Chung in 1999–2000 academic year and is sponsored by Lawrence Technological University and other sponsors. LTU's Robofest is also held internationally, in countries including Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, England, France, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Macau, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Jordan, and UAE. Teams who win their regional event are welcome to participate at the worldwide tournament held at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan. ROBOFEST is a registered trademark of Lawrence Technological University. Robofest is one of the largest University led robotics competitions in the world for pre college students.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to robotics:
The RoboCup Rescue Robot League is an international competition for urban search and rescue robots, in which robots compete to find victims in a simulated earthquake environment. The rescue robot league is run alongside Robocup Rescue Simulation, as part of the RoboCup robot competition.
Atlas is a bipedal humanoid robot primarily developed by the American robotics company Boston Dynamics with funding and oversight from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The robot was initially designed for a variety of search and rescue tasks, and was unveiled to the public on July 11, 2013.
Cloud robotics is a field of robotics that attempts to invoke cloud technologies such as cloud computing, cloud storage, and other Internet technologies centered on the benefits of converged infrastructure and shared services for robotics. When connected to the cloud, robots can benefit from the powerful computation, storage, and communication resources of modern data center in the cloud, which can process and share information from various robots or agent. Humans can also delegate tasks to robots remotely through networks. Cloud computing technologies enable robot systems to be endowed with powerful capability whilst reducing costs through cloud technologies. Thus, it is possible to build lightweight, low-cost, smarter robots with an intelligent "brain" in the cloud. The "brain" consists of data center, knowledge base, task planners, deep learning, information processing, environment models, communication support, etc.
The ARGOS Challenge was a robotic competition sponsored by Total between 2013 and 2017 and co-organized with Agence nationale de la recherche. The acronym ARGOS stands for Autonomous Robot for Gas and Oil Sites.
Taurob is an Austrian robotics company best known for its Taurob Tracker and Taurob Inspector robots and for winning Total Energies' ARGOS Challenge in 2017.
Gazebo is an open-source 2D/3D robotics simulator that began development in 2002. In 2017, development forked into two versions, known as "Gazebo", the original monolithic architecture, and "Ignition", which had moved to becoming a modernized collection of loosely coupled libraries. Following a trademark obstacle in 2022 regarding their use of the name "Ignition", Open Robotics took the opportunity to switch the version names, dubbing the original fork "Gazebo Classic" and the new, modern fork "Gazebo".
NimbRo is the robot competition team of the Autonomous Intelligent Systems group of University of Bonn, Germany. It was founded in 2004 at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
RoboMaster is an annual intercollegiate robot competition held in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, founded and hosted by the drone tech giant DJI. First started in 2015, it is the brainchild of DJI's founder and CEO Frank Wang, and jointly sponsored by the Communist Youth League Central Committee, the All-China Students' Federation (ACSF) and the Shenzhen City Government. It is the first shooting sport-style robotics competition in China.
The Department of Computer Science is a department of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. With a total of 36 professorships and about 3,700 students in 12 study courses, the Department of Computer Science is the largest department of the university. The department shapes the two research profile areas "Cybersecurity (CYSEC)" and "Internet and Digitization (InDi)" of the university.
Oskar von Stryk is professor of simulation, system optimization and robotics at the department of computer science of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He is known for his research on robotics.
Chan-Jin Chung, commonly known as CJ Chung, is a full professor of computer science at Lawrence Technological University (LTU) in Michigan, USA. He founded an international autonomous robotics competition called Robofest in the 1999–2000 academic year as well as numerous educational programs for youth by integrating STEM, arts, autonomous robotics, and computer science. He also served as the founding USA National Organizer of World Robot Olympiad (WRO) in 2014 and 2015. He also started the WISER conference in 2014. He is working on developing a computer science curriculum for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) with a support from National Science Foundation . His research areas include evolutionary computation, cultural algorithms, intelligent systems & autonomous mobile robotics, software engineering,
Taurob Inspector is an ATEX certified mobile robot, developed and manufactured by the Austrian company Taurob GmbH. The Inspector was developed from the Taurob Tracker as part of the OGRIP project.