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The Robotic Mobility Lab at the Department of Mechanics, Mathematics and Management  of the Politecnico di Bari, Italy focuses on the design and development of hardware and software solutions aimed to improve the level of driving automation of ground vehicles. Special emphasis is given to the negotiation of challenging environments, including natural terrains and planetary scenarios.

An underlying theme of the RML research is a reliance on physics-based analysis. That is, we always look into physical models of the mechanisms governing robot-environment interaction, then, we employ design solutions and techniques from control and estimation theory to develop novel robot architectures, and robust sensing and control methods.

RML’s research attempts to develop models and algorithms that can be broadly applied, however we also emphasize rigorous experimental analysis and demonstration in a few important problem domains. These include planetary surface exploration, agricultural robotics,  and passenger vehicle technology.

Research highlights:

• Dissemination video for the H2020 project Autonomous Decision Making in very long traverses Autonomous Decision Making in very long traverses (ADE) , Video courtesy GMV; Music “Battle of the kings” composed by Per Kiilstofte (Machinimasound)
• Design of novel architectures of mobile robots. See a footage of the all-terrain rover Dune (15 Mb). Youtube link
• Terrain traversability assessment for planetary rovers. See a demo of the FTrace system (lateral slip detection by visual tracking of the wheel trace, presented at ICRA 08).
• High-accuracy pose estimation systems. See the work on the robot Husky.
• Multisensor  perception for scene interpretation and classification.
• Path planning on uneven terrain for wheeled, legged, and hybrid robots.
• Agricultural robotics.
• Driving assistance systems. See a youtube demo video of a kinect-based parking assistance system.