RoboTech Vision had the best results at the negotiations of the V4’ armed forces

June 23, 2022  |  Presentation

The Chiefs of Staff of the V4 countries participated in security negotiations and attended the Innovation Challenge Day in Hungary. Experts from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia presented their robotic autonomous solutions. Slovakia was represented by RoboTech Vision, which received the best rating among the competitors. The company accomplished all the tasks in the shortest time with its latest Ringo interior platform and introduced the Crawler exterior robot.

RoboTech Vision was selected by the Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic to present its autonomous solutions to the Innovation Centre in Debrecen. The event was organized not only for the negotiations of the chiefs in connection with the situation in Ukraine, but also to support the cooperation of experts from the V4 countries. Representatives from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia participated in the friendly competition to present the results of their development and establish cooperation for future projects.

‘It is an honour for our company that the Ministry of Defence chose us and we were able to represent Slovakia abroad. We have had many years of development in the field of robotics, which we have now been able to show, so we very much appreciate this opportunity,’ said the company’s executive manager, Ing. Peter Pásztó, PhD. The company registered a robot for the competition that was still in development at that time, but it was best suited for the specified tasks thanks to its properties. ‘Ringo is a new platform that is not yet complete. It lacks a chassis and various other details, but we are glad that we found ourselves in a team of experts who focused more on software properties and real results than on design or impressive simulations,’ added Pásztó.

The best robot among the competition

The company achieved the best results with its platform and autonomous navigation system. Six tasks were available to select from, graded according to their complexity. RoboTech Vision, like other teams, chose the three toughest ones. The robot quickly and autonomously passed through a winding path in the interior bounded by boards on the first day of the competition. It was successful also on the second day, when it first mapped the room using a 2D laser scanner and algorithms while recording the position of obstacles and visual signs indicating radioactivity. Viewers watched the entire process on a live stream. The robot did the same task in more difficult conditions when fog was let into the room.

‘If there is something near the scanner, the robot will evaluate it as an obstacle. Fog was therefore a problem for Ringo. We had to adapt the autonomous navigation to such an environment. In this difficult situation, the team had to improvise on the spot, but we managed the problem by changing the configuration and adding a fog filter to the software, thus allowing the robot to move in denser fog and finish in a better time. The robot eventually completed the task faster than the other competing robots,’ explained the executive manager. Simulations were based on realistic scenarios that may occur when using autonomous robots in military operations and the company integrates them into its algorithms.

Autonomy and AI in the defence sector

The teams had the opportunity to present their results to the Chiefs of Staff of the V4 countries on the third day. ‘Although there was a video recording of the competition, the generals preferred a personal demonstration of the devices and their presentation. Subsequently, we had the opportunity to see a military exercise when an intervention and transport of an injured soldier by a robot was simulated. A Rheinmetall device detected the soldier and autonomously followed him. We developed a similar solution together with the team at the beginning of our company and developed it further. On this occasion, we also showed our larger exterior robot, Crawler, which can track an object and recognize its character or the identity of a person. It is another of our software elements developed in our projects,’ said Pásztó.

Robots adapted to neural networks

In addition to the mentioned devices, the Husky robot from the Canadian company Clearpath, with which the Czech team competed, also participated in the presentation. ‘In our company, we also had the opportunity to use Husky to develop navigation algorithms. Over time, however, we have started to develop our own solutions that are both hardware- and performance-adapted to our computationally demanding algorithms. That is why we have platforms with different types of chassis in our portfolio so that our solutions are as robust as possible,’ added the executive manager. The Hungarian team presented a solution that was complemented by a sensor system and their own software. RoboTech Vision received a reward and positive feedback from the Ministry of Defence for its achievements. The company believes that these achievements will open up opportunities in the field of intelligence and defence projects abroad.