News

Fraunhofer IOSB and ZECH Umwelt test autonomous excavator in a quarry   ·  

In a joint measurement campaign, the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB and ZECH Umwelt tested the ALICE autonomous excavator developed at the ROBDEKON competence center in a quarry. The challenging environment with its different properties of the soil and excavated material provided an ideal setting for testing the autonomous excavator. This allowed valuable findings to be gathered in order to evaluate the system's robustness in real operating conditions.

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Scientists from Fraunhofer IOSB-AST successfully control forklift with 5G and Internet over a distance of 260 kilometers using teleoperation   ·     ·   Press Release

As part of a demonstration, scientists from Fraunhofer IOSB-AST were able to successfully teleoperate the autonomous mobile transport system "MATS", a modified PALFINGER forklift, over a distance of 260 kilometers (Ilmenau – Karlsruhe). A local 5G network was used along with special automation technologies to process and evaluate the numerous sensor data. Future fields of application include the remote control of mobile machinery in a wide variety of scenarios.

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Now on LinkedIn   ·  

The Competence Center can now also be found on LinkedIn.

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Decontamination robotics hands-on   ·     ·   Press Release

The Competence Center ROBDEKON opened its doors in Karlsruhe to an interested audience of experts and presented the current state of research in the field of decontamination robotics. Around 80 participants, including high-ranking representatives of the energy industry and companies working on the remediation of contaminated sites, were able to actively familiarize themselves with the (semi-)autonomous robot systems in live demonstrations on October 18 and 19, 2023, and discuss solutions with the ROBDEKON partners. In the coming period, the technologies developed in the BMBF-funded competence center will be tested in real environments and made fit for practical use.

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Participatory Event »Decontamination Robotics 2023«   ·  

From October 18th to October 19th, 2023, the second participation event of the ROBDEKON Competence Center will take place in Karlsruhe, featuring hands-on demonstrations and talks from academia and practice.

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KERNTec Scientific Days 2023: Insights into the future of decontamination technology   ·  

The KERNTec Scientific Days, a newly introduced platform for scientific exchange in nuclear technology, took place from June 13-15, 2023 in Frankfurt am Main. ROBDEKON was there.

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Pilot projects for autonomous decontamination: ROBDEKON competence center enters a new phase   ·     ·   Press Release

  • Robots should remediate contaminated sites as autonomously as possible and support the dismantling of nuclear facilities as well as the recovery of hazardous materials: This is the objective of ROBDEKON, a competence center funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

  • After four years of defining detailed use cases, researching technological principles, and developing demonstrators, the focus in phase II is now on transferring the results into practice and making the center permanent.

  • Therefore, ROBDEKON is looking for partners for pilot projects – i. e. companies that want to offer and/or use autonomous decontamination technology.

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ROBDEKON: Practical system solutions at the end of the competence center’s first funding phase   ·     ·   Press Release

Robots should perform decontamination tasks as independently as possible in environments that are hostile to humans, e.g. in the remediation of contaminated sites or in the dismantling of nuclear facilities and the decontamination of power plant components – with the aim of allowing humans to stay out of the danger zone. This vision was at the beginning of ROBDEKON. Now, the first, four-year funding phase of the competence center has been completed and various systems waiting for their evaluation in the field have been developed. These systems are able to measure contamination, handle hazardous substances, or autonomously remove contaminated layers of soil.

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Best Presentation Award at KERNTECHNIK 2022   ·  

From 21.06.2022 to 22.06.2022 the KERNTECHNIK 2022 took place in Leipzig. The team of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sascha Gentes from the professorship Dismantling of Conventional and Nuclear Structures at the Institute of Technology and Management in Construction of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was represented with several presentations.

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»Workshop on Intelligent Autonomous Robots for Hazardous Decommissioning Tasks« at the IAS-17   ·  

On Monday, June 13th 2022, from 9am to 4:45pm, the Workshop on Intelligent Autonomous Robots for Hazardous Decommissioning Tasks is held in the context of the 17th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-17) in Zagreb, Croatia. Deploying mobile robots in hazardous environments is a difficult task that involves not only high costs but also health and environmental risks. Modern, intelligent robots can support the decommissioning and reduce many hazards for humans.

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ROBDEKON at the BMBF Innovation Forum »Civil Security«   ·  

ROBDEKON is participating with a booth at the BMBF Innovation Forum »Civil Security« 2022 and discusses novel concepts for robot-based decontamination with experts.

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Fraunhofer IOSB Welcomes Spot as Latest Member of its Robot Family   ·  

Yet another member joins the robot family in the Fraunhofer IOSB lab: Boston Dynamics’ Robot dog Spot has been equipped to support the decontamination tasks in ROBDEKON with advanced exploration capabilities.

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»1st Workshop on Scene Understanding in Unstructured Environments« at the DAGM German Conference on Pattern Recognition   ·  

On Tuesday, September 28th 2021, from 2pm - 6:15pm, the 1st Workshop on Scene Understanding in Unstructured Environments is held in the context of the DAGM German Conference on Pattern Recognition. Scene understanding in unstructured environments is a key element in ROBDEKON.

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ROBDEKON showcases state of development – Progress in decontamination tasks: Robots have learnt new capabilities   ·  

In 2018, the ROBDEKON competence center (robotic systems for decontamination in hazardous environments) started operations. After three years of work, a regular review was due - on this occasion, the ROBDEKON partners in Karlsruhe and Bremen presented the state of their developed technology and gave live demonstrations of the teleoperated, semi-autonomous and autonomous systems they are researching.

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VDB Mapping: Framework for real-time 3D mapping released   ·  

The FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik has released »VDB Mapping«, a high-performance probabilistic 3D mapping framework that generates volumetric environment maps in real-time from lidar data.

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iviz: an App for visualization and teleoperation of robots in AR and VR   ·  

KIT releases the newly developed app »iviz« for visualization and teleoperation of robots using virtual and augmented reality.

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First participatory event   ·  

From 22.10.2019 to 23.10.2019 the first participatory event of the ROBDEKON Competence Center will take place in Karlsruhe. The event has the character of a conference and will feature talks by experts in the field of decontamination and robotics. The talks will be given both by users from the field and by members of the ROBDEKON consortium.

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»ROBDEKON«: Central contact point for the development of robots for decontamination tasks opened   ·     ·   Press Release

When chemically contaminated sites or old landfills are remediated, toxic waste is sorted or nuclear facilities are dismantled, people work in environments that are hazardous to their health: they handle pollutants, there is a risk of fire or explosion, or the level of radioactive radiation is increased. This makes complex and often stressful protective measures necessary. This could be remedied by robots and autonomous machines that can carry out the work without an operator nearby. There is now a central point of contact for researching and testing the technologies required for this purpose: on 25 June, the »ROBDEKON Competence Center - Robots for Decontamination in Hazardous Environments«, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), was opened in Karlsruhe.

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Announcement: Ceremonial Opening   ·  

Around a year after work began on setting up the ROBDEKON Competence Center (»Robotic systems for decontamination in hazardous environments«), a ceremonial opening event will be held on June 25, 2019, at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Karlsruhe.

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Launch of the competence center »ROBDEKON«   ·     ·   Press Release

If chemically contaminated sites have to be remediated or nuclear facilities have to be dismantled, workers are exposed to considerable health risks despite all precautions and protective equipment. In the future, robotic systems are to carry out such decontamination work so that people can stay away from the danger zone. The new »ROBDEKON Competence Center«, which is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research with twelve million euros, is working to make this vision a reality.

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