The field of robotics is growing, with an expanding array of applications across manufacturing, mining, service and many other industries. Consequently, there is an increasing demand for new robots, as well as new engineers who can design and build them.
Universities and colleges strive to be at the forefront of robotics innovation. Most schools have departments, courses and degrees in the study of robotics, but not every school has the space, faculty and equipment to build and maintain a full robotics lab.
The project currently centers on small robots like these GRITSBots designed for control by remote users. One day, project leader Magnus Egerstedt imagines robots of all shapes and sizes will fill the Robotarium. (Image courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology/Raftermen Photography.)
Creating the opportunity for all robotics researchers to have the resources to work on cutting-edge robotics development is the inspiration behind the “Robotarium”, a remote-access robotics laboratory.
The Robotarium is being built by the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the new lab will allow roboticists from around the country to conduct experiments and research remotely.
Researchers from other colleges and universities, as well as secondary school students, will be able to schedule experiments, upload their own code, watch the robots via streaming video feeds and receive scientific data demonstrating their results.
In its final form, the Robotarium is expected to have up to 100 ground and aerial swarm robots. Currently the lab’s robots are mostly small, but the goal is to eventually offer robots of all different sizes and types.
The team expects the lab to be fully operational in 2017.
The project is led by Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). The team has already created a mini-version of the Robotarium, with Georgia Tech grad students using it to complete their robotics projects. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego have also successfully uploaded code during a recent test session.
Access and collaboration are the primary goals of the Robotarium project.
“Building and maintaining a world-class, multi-robot lab is too expensive for a large number of roboticists and budding roboticists. This creates a steep barrier to entry into our field,” said Magnus Egerstedt, a professor in the school of electrical and computer engineering and one of the project leads. “We need to provide more access to more people in order to continue creating robot-assisted technologies. The Robotarium will allow that.”
“A research instrument like the Robotarium has the potential to build stronger networks of collaborative research, making the whole significantly larger than the sum of its parts,” Egerstedt continued. “The end result has the potential to show how remote access instruments can be structured in other areas beyond robotics.”
The benefits of this lab aren’t only for the students and researchers engaged in their own research projects. The lab will also allow students, researchers and other faculty to watch the research projects of others in action, to gather data and share ideas from anywhere in the country.
“It’s going to be a room where robots are always roaming around,” said Egerstedt. “Georgia Tech students will be able to hang out and watch research that is happening across the country and beyond.”
The project is being funded through two grants from the National Science Foundation totalling $2.5 million. One grant will be used to transform an existing classroom space into the new laboratory. The second will go toward creating safe and secure remote open-access systems for the lab.
For more information on the Robotarium, visit the Georgia Institute of Technology’s website.