Autonomous Robot Sneaks Around its Environment Undetected

(Left) CSIRO autonomous surveillance bot (Right) A Gorilla found it, pokes the camera. (via CSIRO)

By now, you should have had the chance to catch at least an animal life documentary or two either on the TV or on your favorite online streaming site. Ever wonder how such awe-inspiring and daringly close footage of menacing wild animals can be taken? I’m sure David Attenborough has plenty of scars and broken film equipment to tell the tale. With the recent advancement of autonomous robotics, the old way of sneaking up on a wild, snoring gorilla may soon change.

Mathew Dunbabin and Ashley Tews of the CSIRO Autonomous Systems Laboratory in Brisbane, Australia are busy working on a robot that is designed to sneak around its environment undetected. The CSIRO lab’s autonomous division specializes in technology that monitors the environment and infrastructure while assisting human operators to perform difficult, unpleasant, or hazardous tasks, like getting an up-close shot of a feeding pack of wolves.

Using this technology, Dunbabin and Tews have created a robot that picks up the sound of its surroundings and of its own movements and uses this data to detect the best time to move. The robot accomplishes this by calculating when its movements will be unheard to targets up to 50 meters away. That is one sneaky bot.

Dunbabin’s work also includes the research and development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for navigation in unstructured areas, such as the Great Barrier Reef, with the aid of vision sensors. Additional work of his includes autonomous surface vehicles that are tied together via wireless sensor networks to perform cooperative robotics research.

With the right technological configuration, Dunbabin and Tews can easily have an army of cooperative robot spies venturing the world for undiscovered animal species in dangerous environments. Attenborough might want to consider hiring an army of these bots and finding the Lochness Monster once and for all, though Big Foot wouldn’t be too far off either.

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