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A team from the Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Control (RISC) lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia were the lucky winners of the GSA Special Prize at this year’s ERL Emergency Local Tournament, which took place in the fields surrounding the ‘Hacienda de Oran’ in Seville on 18-23 February.

The ERL Emergency Service Robots is a Horizon 2020-funded civilian robotics competition that promotes the development of multi-domain robotic systems for emergency response within the robotics community. The competition requires international teams to survey a scene, collect data, search for specific elements and identify critical hazards, all in a race against the clock.

On February 18-23, teams from international universities and research centres met in Seville to participate in the second ERL Local Tournament, hosted by the Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC). At the competition, teams of engineers and scientists linked to robotics and unmanned systems presented their latest innovations in the application of these technologies in emergency situations, such as rescue operations, firefighting or natural disasters.

“CATEC was responsible for hosting and organizing this international competition, which was held for the first time in Spain, thanks to its leadership and experience in the development of new technological applications in this field,” said Dr Francisco Javier Pérez Grau, Head of the CATEC Perception & Software Unit. “This event has once again made Andalusia a benchmark for applied research and new innovative developments in robotics and unmanned systems, with a view to their real application in the market.”

A rewarding experience

The GSA special prize targeted robots that make use of solutions based on Galileo and EGNOS. For air robots, the challenge involved both horizontal accuracy in landings and vertical accuracy while hovering at specific geographic coordinates. Land robots were judged on horizontal accuracy during waypoint-based navigation.

The KAUST team, with principal investigator Prof. Jeff Shamma, participated in the air robot challenge and found the experience to be very rewarding. “I am very happy that we made the effort to take part in the tournament. On a personal level it was a very enjoyable experience. But it was also extremely rewarding on a technical level, as the team gained valuable experience in quickly resolving complex problems in the field,” said team leader Kuat Telegenov. “Even preparations for the event were rewarding – as we had to think outside the box to deal with all the issues that arose.”

He said that, initially, the team wasn’t sure if they would participate, because they didn’t have a Galileo-enabled receiver. “But we checked on the UseGalileo.eu website to see which receivers we could use and, in the end, went with a u-blox MAX-M8.”

The team acknowledged the edge that they received from Galileo in terms of accuracy. “We hit our waypoints with an accuracy of around 2.2 meters. We believe that, with GPS alone the accuracy would be about 2.5-3 meters, so we had a significant accuracy gain from Galileo,” Telegenov said.

Prize partnership

For its Special Prize, the GSA partnered with GNSS receiver manufacturer Septentrio, which offered an AsteRx-i S receiver to the winning team. With its size, weight and power consumption, the AsteRx-i S is ideal for applications such as inspection with UAV's, UAS photogrammetry, automation, robotics and logistics.

“Septentrio is proud to support the ERL emergency 2019 competition,” said Septentrio Product Manager Francesca Clemente. “We are driven by a strong customer focus and deep understanding of applications and use cases. Our professional products are not only able to provide reliable and precise positioning but are also easy to integrate and utilise thanks to intuitive web UI, tools and interfaces,” she said, adding: “This makes it ideal for young university teams where performance and ease of use are key to develop new solution in a short time.”

“We congratulate the winning team and we are eager to see the AsteRx-i S integrated their innovative robotics and unmanned solutions!”

About the tournament

The European Robotics League (ERL) is an innovative robot competition that stems from its predecessors - the euRathlon and RoCKIn competitions - and focuses on tasks that robots must execute in realistic emergency situations. The competition is composed of multiple local tournaments, held in different locations across Europe, in addition to a number of major events.

Teams participate in a minimum of two tournaments (local and/or major) per year and get scores based on their performances. Each team’s top two tournament scores are then added together and the teams are ranked based on their cumulative score. Prizes for the top teams are awarded at the following year’s European Robotics Forum (ERF).

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

A team from the Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Control (RISC) lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia were the lucky winners of the GSA Special Prize at this year’s ERL Emergency Local Tournament, which took place in the fields surrounding the ‘Hacienda de Oran’ in Seville on 18-23 March.

The ERL Emergency Service Robots is a Horizon 2020-funded civilian robotics competition that promotes the development of multi-domain robotic systems for emergency response within the robotics community. The competition requires international teams to survey a scene, collect data, search for specific elements and identify critical hazards, all in a race against the clock.

On March 18-23, teams from international universities and research centres met in Seville to participate in the second ERL Local Tournament, hosted by the Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC). At the competition, teams of engineers and scientists linked to robotics and unmanned systems presented their latest innovations in the application of these technologies in emergency situations, such as rescue operations, firefighting or natural disasters.

“CATEC was responsible for hosting and organizing this international competition, which was held for the first time in Spain, thanks to its leadership and experience in the development of new technological applications in this field,” said Dr Francisco Javier Pérez Grau, Head of the CATEC Perception & Software Unit. “This event has once again made Andalusia a benchmark for applied research and new innovative developments in robotics and unmanned systems, with a view to their real application in the market.”

A rewarding experience

The GSA special prize targeted robots that make use of solutions based on Galileo and EGNOS. For air robots, the challenge involved both horizontal accuracy in landings and vertical accuracy while hovering at specific geographic coordinates. Land robots were judged on horizontal accuracy during waypoint-based navigation.

The KAUST team, with principal investigator Prof. Jeff Shamma, participated in the air robot challenge and found the experience to be very rewarding. “I am very happy that we made the effort to take part in the tournament. On a personal level it was a very enjoyable experience. But it was also extremely rewarding on a technical level, as the team gained valuable experience in quickly resolving complex problems in the field,” said team leader Kuat Telegenov. “Even preparations for the event were rewarding – as we had to think outside the box to deal with all the issues that arose.”

He said that, initially, the team wasn’t sure if they would participate, because they didn’t have a Galileo-enabled receiver. “But we checked on the UseGalileo.eu website to see which receivers we could use and, in the end, went with a u-blox MAX-M8.”

The team acknowledged the edge that they received from Galileo in terms of accuracy. “We hit our waypoints with an accuracy of around 2.2 meters. We believe that, with GPS alone the accuracy would be about 2.5-3 meters, so we had a significant accuracy gain from Galileo,” Telegenov said.

Prize partnership

For its Special Prize, the GSA partnered with GNSS receiver manufacturer Septentrio, which offered an AsteRx-i S receiver to the winning team. With its size, weight and power consumption, the AsteRx-i S is ideal for applications such as inspection with UAV's, UAS photogrammetry, automation, robotics and logistics.

“Septentrio is proud to support the ERL emergency 2019 competition,” said Septentrio Product Manager Francesca Clemente. “We are driven by a strong customer focus and deep understanding of applications and use cases. Our professional products are not only able to provide reliable and precise positioning but are also easy to integrate and utilise thanks to intuitive web UI, tools and interfaces,” she said, adding: “This makes it ideal for young university teams where performance and ease of use are key to develop new solution in a short time.”

“We congratulate the winning team and we are eager to see the AsteRx-i S integrated their innovative robotics and unmanned solutions!”

About the tournament

The European Robotics League (ERL) is an innovative robot competition that stems from its predecessors - the euRathlon and RoCKIn competitions - and focuses on tasks that robots must execute in realistic emergency situations. The competition is composed of multiple local tournaments, held in different locations across Europe, in addition to a number of major events.

Teams participate in a minimum of two tournaments (local and/or major) per year and get scores based on their performances. Each team’s top two tournament scores are then added together and the teams are ranked based on their cumulative score. Prizes for the top teams are awarded at the following year’s European Robotics Forum (ERF).

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

Under what conditions would it be beneficial to implement an EGNOS service for payment and liability critical applications in the road sector in the 2025-2035 timeframe?

EGNOS is the European SBAS and augments GPS L1 C/A civilian signal by providing corrections and integrity information for positioning and navigation applications over Europe. The next generation of EGNOS, EGNOS V3, will augment GPS and Galileo constellations in the L1 and L5 bands and will extend the service area to the entire landmasses of EU member states.

This project aims at assessing under what conditions it would be beneficial to implement an EGNOS V3 service for payment and liability critical applications in the road sector until 2035.

Pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) and pay-how-you-drive (PHYD) insurances are emerging applications in the road sector that rely on how much, where, when and how the road user drives to tailor the premiums paid by the policyholder. Other road applications such as reconstruction of accidents, mobility as a service, traffic infraction monitoring and fine management, traffic congestion monitoring, automatic charging in car parks, etc. may also in the future rely on the vehicle’s position and navigation data to offer services to car drivers.

Liability and payment-critical applications such as the ones described above are highly sensitive to undetected GNSS underperformance, non-availability or large errors since significant legal or economic consequences for the service or application provider may occur. In fact, a mismatch of the vehicle’s current speed together with erroneous position data may impact the user charging associated with the driving paths, skills and habits of the road user. Afterwards, it becomes very difficult for end users to claim that they are being overcharged or for service providers to avoid undercharging their customers.

The analysis shall focus on the identification of user and service requirements, the development of an appropriate integrity concept and the definition of the service provision scheme. The On-Board Unit (OBU) shall integrate the E-GNSS receiver together with other sensors necessary to trust the position in situations where enforcement, payments and related claims are involved.

The study will be fully financed by the European Commission under the H2020 framework programme for research and innovation, within the budget allocated to the evolution of EGNOS mission. The European GNSS Agency (GSA) will be in charge of the technical supervision of the project on behalf of the European Commission.

More information about the Invitation to tender can be found here.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).