The Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC) is a 1.6 million dollar prize competition for autonomous mobile robots funded by TARDEC and the DSTO the primary research organizations for Tank and Defense research in the United States and Australia respectively. The goal of the competition is to create multi-vehicle robotic teams that can execute an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission in a dynamic urban environment. The challenge required competitors to map a 500m x 500m challenge area in under 3.5 hours and to identify and neutralize any static or mobile threats. The challenge event was conducted in Adelaide, Australia during November 2010.
Contents |
Initially 12 teams were selected for the competition, during the first downselection trial the top five teams were selected[1]:
Ultimately the overall goal of fully autonomous operations without human intervention was not achieved, however the Secretary for Defence stated “The competing vehicles demonstrated new advances in robotics technology, which are very promising for their potential deployment in combat zones where they can replace our troops in carrying out life-threatening tasks” [2] and considered the competition a success.
The official results of the competition were:
The University of Pennsylvania team won the Old Ram Shed Challenge due to their high rate of threat-identification.
Key technology used by all teams was computer vision, sensor fusion, human-robot_interaction, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).