Abstract
Field robotics is a very important sub-field of robotic systems, focusing on systems which need to navigate in open, unpredictable terrain and perform non-repetitive missions while monitoring and reacting to their surroundings. General testing and validation standards for larger robotic systems, including field robots, have not been developed yet due to a variety of factors including disagreement over terminology and functional/performance requirements. This tutorial presents a generalized, step-by-step system-level test plan for field robots under manual, semi-autonomous/tele-operated, and autonomous control schemes; this includes a discussion of the requirements and testing parameters, and a set of suggested safety, communications, and behavior evaluation test courses. The testing plan presented here is relevant to both commercial and academic research into field robotics, providing a standardized general testing procedure.
Highlights
A significant aspect of robotic system design involves ensuring, through the testing and evaluation of platforms, that requirements and quality standards are satisfied
Identifying the system performance envelope helps the stakeholders decide on the application space, supports platform improvement, and provides realistic limitation information to the customer [6,7,8]
Important parameters related to each mode, behavior, or function of a field robotic system are described from a general perspective to act as a staring point for analysis of a specific system
Summary
A significant aspect of robotic system design involves ensuring, through the testing and evaluation of platforms, that requirements and quality standards are satisfied. Example field robotic platforms for (a,b) agriculture [28,29], (c) construction and demolition [40], (d) search-and-rescue [43], and (e) working in explosive or hazardous environments [46] (All figures originally published under CC-BY-4.0 license) The purpose of this series of evaluations will be to assess the effectiveness (in terms of safety, communication, and behavior) of a given field robotic system; the test courses and testing procedures presented can be adapted for a wide variety of platforms. This tutorial presents the background (Section 1), the inputs, the procedures, and other important information over several sections of this paper; these include a description of the basic approach (Section 2), a discussion of modes, functions, and behaviors of operation (Section 3), developed test courses for safety and communication (Section 4), developed test courses for behavior evaluation (Section 5), a discussion of obstacle use in the behavior test courses (Section 6), a discussion of how to assess and define terrain complexity (Section 7), and use notes and conclusions (Section 8)
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