Linda, the University of Lincoln’s STRANDS robot, met up with colleagues Bob and Lucie ahead of being deployed in working environments.
The trio are part of a group of six robots involved in the £7.2 million collaborative STRANDS project aimed at creating mobile robots that are able to operate independently, based on an understanding of 3D space and how this space changes over time.
These specialist mobile robots are currently being programmed to act intelligently in real-world environments, with the ultimate aim of being able to support security guards or staff in care homes.
Funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework programme, the project involves security company G4S Technology Ltd and the Academy of Ageing Research, an Austrian care home provider, where the technology developed throughout the four year venture will be tested.
Bob, from the University of Birmingham, and Lucie, from the University of Leeds, visited Linda at the University of Lincoln for a week of coding with the research team.
Bob will then be sent to G4S Technology in Tewksbury, UK from 19th May to 6th June and Werner (who did not make the trip) from Technische Universität Wien is going to Haus der Barmherzigkeit in Vienna, Austria from 12th to 30th May.
Dr Nick Hawes, senior lecturer from the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, said: “This will be one of the first times, if not the first time, that autonomous mobile robots of this sophistication have been deployed in real working environments for such a significant length of time.”
Research partners are University of Birmingham (UK); University of Lincoln (UK); G4S Technology Ltd (UK); Akademie für Altersforschung am Haus der Barmherzigkeit (Austria); Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden); RWTH Aachen University (Germany); The Vienna University of Technology (Austria) and University of Leeds (UK).
For more information on the STRANDS project go to http://strands.acin.tuwien.ac.at/consortium.html
Follow the robots on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LindaStrands https://twitter.com/LucieStrands and https://twitter.com/BobStrands
