Research into autonomous ground vehicles has been on-going at the University of British Columbia by an undergraduate student group called Thunderbird Robotics since 2004. The work began with  development of an entry into the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge in which a 1991 Jeep Cherokee was converted into a telerobotic system by creating a removable robotic driver. Later this vehicle was adapted to be driven fully-autonomously to enter the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Since then, the group has been involved in five independent, yet interlinked projects:

1. 1/10 Scale Autonomous Robot Racing
2. Robotic Soccer Team
3. The NASA Regolith Excavator Centennial Challenge
4. The Zero-Emissions Race Around the World
5. Development of a Fully-Autonomous Mine-Haulage Truck System

The approach taken in these projects involved three main sub-systems - hardware, software, and instrumentation conducted in a collaborative fashion by about 400 students over the years. The presentation will describe these projects - how each was conceived, coordinated, and completed. The various successes and failures will be discussed and projected into what the future may hold for robots in society. 

Speaker: John Meech is Professor in the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering
at the University of British Columbia. He is Director of CERM3 (Centre for Environmental Research in Minerals, Metals, and Materials), a multidisciplinary team of over 30 researchers who conduct studies on Mining and the Environment. He teaches Industrial Automation and Robotics, Introduction to Mineral Processing, and Artificial Intelligence in the Mining Industry. His research activities include Safety Issues at Mine Reclamation Sites, Fracture Mechanics at High-Impact Velocities, Autonomous Open Pit Haulage Vehicles, Geothermal Activities in British Columbia (both low- and high-temperature applications, and Murcury Use in Gold Mining.

In 2004 he founded a student-run group called IBC Thunderbird Robotics that conduct applications of mobile robotics in a variety of competitive environments that included the BARPA Grand and Urban Challenges, the NASA Regolith Excavator Challenge, the University of Waterloo Robot Racing Competition, Robo-Cup Robotic Soccer, and the Zero-Emissions Electric Car Race. More than 400 students from across the Faculty of Applied Science have participated in this club over the past 5 years.

Info: Email Joint Communications Chair Alon Newton, anewton at ieee.org