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A smart swarm of unmanned, four-wheeled robots that operate with a “hive mind” will participate in an international urban reconnaissance contest in Australia on Nov. 10.
Six students from U-M’s MAGIC team, which built the bots from the ground up, departed for the games Oct. 9.
MAGIC stands for Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge, organized by the defense departments of the United States and Australia. Its goal is to demonstrate emerging unmanned technologies. It was open to academic and industry participants. Team Michigan is one of six finalists that will vie for $1.1 million in prize money.
This contest will showcase the state of the art in autonomous robot teams that work together to perform a task.
“The robots make almost all of their own decisions, which means that a single person can control 14 of them,” says Edwin Olson, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science who advises the team. “They can find bombs, people, cars and other objects of interest. The robots build a map with all this information and transmit it back to the human commander in real time. Our system eliminates the need for humans to be put in harm’s way.”
The students on the MAGIC team started designing and building their machines more than a year ago. In July they learned they had qualified for the finals, based on a site visit from contest organizers.
At the contest, they will field about 14 robots. Their tasks will be to efficiently generate a map of the terrain and neutralize any bombs or enemy combatants without harming nearby civilians in a 500-by-500-meter arena. They will have about 3.5 hours to complete three phases.
Each of the six teams will run on a different day of the competition week and the winner won’t be announced until Nov. 22. First place wins $750,000 in research funding.
