Last week was a very intense time for DMC. Directly after Festival of Knowledge, robots, drones and measurement equipment got packed and prepared to be taken for an underground adventure in the corridors of the former gold and arsenic mine in Złoty Stok (meaning ‘golden hillside’). Researchers from the Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, hand in hand with young scientists from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering tried their best, facing the problems that await electronic devices in mines.
It was a wonderful oportunity to check if our SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) algorithms were properly tailored for this specific and demanding environment. Robots were tried out in the conditions of high humidity, lack of lighting and on uneven surfaces, wandering through the corridors to create 3D models and measure environmental parameters.
What is more, we were able to, at the same time, test acting skills of DMC members, together with abilities of our UGV and drone to perform the rescue operations. Among other missions, our wheeled robot has been sent to find unconscious miners located in dark corridors, using infrared thermal-imaging cameras.
