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SACAC Guest Lecture: Challenges Developing Autonomous Ground Vehicle Capability for Off-Road Applications
SPEAKER: Dr David Reinecke
Dr Reinecke completed his BEng and BEng Honours in Mechanical Engineering, a Masters in Engineering Management at the University of Pretoria and his PhD in mechanical engineering at Cranfield University (Defence Academy) in the UK. Some of his achievements include assembling the first Rolls Royce E4B gearbox manufactured in South Africa as well as the industrialisation of the Rooivalk Attack Helicopter transmission system. Dr Reinecke became a Research Group Leader at the CSIR in 2006 fulfilling this role until 2016 after which he focused on research, where he successfully grew the protection research capability through a multitude of training and infrastructure development initiatives. A fundamental foundation of Dr Reinecke’s ongoing strategy has been leveraging local and international collaboration with Tertiary Education Institutes, Military Research Organisations and industry. He currently serves on six international military research panels driving and supporting international government policies, technology research and acquisition. Locally Dr. Reinecke is the interim founding chair of the Scientific Imaging Association of South Africa and is serving on the Aerospace, Maritime and Defence Industries Association (AMD) sub-group working on the rejuvenation of the local military manufacturing base. He is an honorary lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand.
Abstract:
Military application of Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV) poses unique challenges to autonomous control systems. Computational modelling and simulation can be used to inform general engineering aspects of AGV design such as sensor location and orientation, system dynamic response etc., as well train the autonomy perception module. A crucial and oft overlooked aspect to modeling and simulation is verification and validation of the complex models required. Models are built of the environment and all its elements, the sensors, the platform and of course the autonomy stack itself. Each of these needs to be built, tested, verified and validated.
This talk will present the CSIR Landward Sciences Impact Area’s journey to an off-road AGV mobility capability for the South African National Defence Force. The approach follows a collaborative parallel development of the computational model and the autonomy stack using both existing and in-development AGV’s and various software platforms, with outcomes from international efforts to fast track the local capability establishment.
The talk will cover the development of the required digital environment, the software used including Robotic Operation Systems (ROS), autonomy stack, testing and the challenges each of these pose as well as an automated verification and validation code.