06 September 13h00-14h00
Robotics has been changing our daily life since the 60s, starting with the development of industrial robots able to perform repetitive and painful tasks in a controlled environment. With the constant evolution of technology, such as the embedded computational power or the enhancement of sensors, robots have been getting out of warehouses to face the outside, natural and unpredictable world.
Nowadays, Defense organizations seek to use autonomous systems to operate in dangerous areas to support troops, decreasing human risks and enhancing situational awareness to make better decisions. However, operating in such environments infers overcoming numerous constraints, challenging the current state of the art of autonomous systems. Indeed, being able to evolve within a field of operation means being able to perform tasks in various environments. Those environments can be characterized as natural (snow, desert, forest, etc.); GNSS denied or shared fields with allied or enemy forces. In addition, operating close to enemies implies reacting to unexpected events such as a robotic agents loss, jammed or spoofed communications, and unexpected changes in the surrounding environment.
How can we comply with these objectives and constraints? How do developed systems able to evolve in a bunch of different situations and able to integrate future technical evolutions? What can be done to handle eventual jamming, spoofing, or cyber-attacks? How to behave appropriately in a natural environment, working together with humans or other autonomous systems? Addressing these problems requires a system architecture which is articulated around interoperability, allowing platform- and sensor-agnostic developments for defense applications.