ICARUS partners to organise the 8th IARP Workshop on Robotics for Risky Environments

The Royal Military Academy of Belgium (RMA), the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto (INESC) and the Portuguese Navy´s Research Centre (CINAV) have joined forces to organise the 8th International Advanced Robotics Programme (IARP) Workshop on Robotics for Risky Environment (RISE), which will take place on the 28th and 29th of January 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal.

The aim of the event is to foster international cooperation in order to develop advanced robotic systems that can support human activities in harsh, demanding or dangerous conditions and environments. The IARP RISE Workshop 2015 will focus on Command and Control for robotic systems and will be held in conjunction with two series of NATO lectures (26-27 and 30-31 January).

The use of robots with suitable modularised mechanised structures that are well adapted to local conditions can greatly improve the safety and the security of personnel as well as facilitating efficiency, productivity and flexibility for operations. Development of such technologies presents challenges in terms of robotic mechanics and mobility, sensors and sensor fusion, autonomous or semi-autonomous navigation and machine intelligence.

The workshop will review and discuss the available risky intervention/environmental surveillance technologies that are applied in extreme conditions, along with their limitations as well as development efforts to automate tasks related to:

· Inspecting areas affected by fire, crises or disasters

· Chemical, Biological, Radiological , Nuclear and Explosive (CBRNE) threats

· Demining Actions

· Search and Rescue Operations

· Satellite and Aerial Monitoring

· Mapping of buildings and 3D reconstruction

· Remote controlled, semi-autonomous, autonomous vehicles

· Autonomous robot navigation

· Networked Multi-robot cooperation