The STRANDS Project: Long-Term Autonomy in Everyday Environments
This addresses the demand for autonomous service robots in everyday environments like security and care, though it is incremental as it integrates existing AI and robotics research.
The STRANDS project tackled the challenge of enabling mobile service robots to operate autonomously in real-world environments for extended periods, achieving a combined 104 days of operation and covering 116km across four deployments. The robots performed user-defined tasks in security and care settings, using their long run times to improve performance.
Thanks to the efforts of the robotics and autonomous systems community, robots are becoming ever more capable. There is also an increasing demand from end-users for autonomous service robots that can operate in real environments for extended periods. In the STRANDS project we are tackling this demand head-on by integrating state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and robotics research into mobile service robots, and deploying these systems for long-term installations in security and care environments. Over four deployments, our robots have been operational for a combined duration of 104 days autonomously performing end-user defined tasks, covering 116km in the process. In this article we describe the approach we have used to enable long-term autonomous operation in everyday environments, and how our robots are able to use their long run times to improve their own performance.