An Integrated Assessment of Progress in Robotic Perception and Semantic Navigation

Abstract : The US Army Research Laboratory's Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (RCTA) is a program intended to change robots from tools that Soldiers use into teammates with which Soldiers can work. This requires the integration of fundamental and applied research in perception, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interaction. In October 2014, the RCTA assessed progress toward integrating this research. This assessment was designed to evaluate the robot's performance when it used new capabilities to perform selected aspects of a mission. The assessed capabilities included the ability of the robot to navigate semantically outdoors with respect to structures and landmarks, identify doors in the facades of buildings, and identify and track persons emerging from those doors. This report presents assessment results of each of these capabilities, evaluated separately but as a component of an integrated system.