RTU Develops Solutions for a New Type of Robot

There is a rapidly growing market for unmanned mobile platforms in various industries. However, there are many industries working in environments where a global positioning network is not available (e.g. complex natural terrains, industrial warehouses or production plants, etc.). The prototype development customer, Gatis Vectirāns and North Grip Innovations, has developed a universal «follow me» system concept, whose innovation is the ability to operate locally without Global Positioning System (GPS) involvement and to enable unmanned platforms to follow a person. The system combines data from several technologies - video (artificial intelligence), radio positioning and lidar data - which are processed by an algorithm in proprietary software and exported in a universal code recognised by the unmanned equipment's processor systems.

Gundars Miezītis, Senior Mechatronics (Robotics) Engineer at the RTU Science and Innovation Centre's Innovative Product Development Department, worked on the development of the «follow me» module, which will be integrated into the customer's robot. «We have trained a neural network so that the module is able to recognise a person in a video stream, and in difficult recognition conditions, i.e. in a forest or meadow,» he says. Such a «follow me» module, easily integrated into the overall electronics of the platform, offers great advantages in terms of the capabilities of the personnel functions. Whether it is a soldier followed by a robot with equipment, a rescuer carrying an injured person or a farmer followed by a harvesting robot, the follow me module will allow them to use both hands and increase their working capacity.

RTU has developed solutions for a new type of robot. G.Miezītis also participated in a second project, where a prototype of an underwater engine was developed for an underwater robot, whose main task would be to assist firefighter-rescuers in their work. The client, Rodions Sorokins, is himself a firefighter-rescuer and diver, so he knows exactly what the end product needs: reliability, the ability to operate in extreme conditions, a sufficiently simple maintenance and control system, and rapid availability, which is particularly important. The submersible engine developed and tested by G.Miezītis also had to be minimal in size and weight, but maximum in performance, shock-resistant and able to withstand submersion in water up to 300 metres deep.

«The new thing here is the magnetic coupling - the motor is not directly in the water, but in a hermetically sealed chamber,» says G. Miezītis. «If the motor is in the water, it will corrode over time. You can de-hermeticise and solve this problem, but then the question becomes how to transfer power from the motor to the propeller. The proposed solution is to use magnets,» he explains. Several types of magnetic transmission were tested to see how the most power could be transferred to the propeller. «Technically, of course, the more magnets you can use, the more powerful it will be, but there were also various limiting factors: the size of the motor, the size of the propeller, the size of the submarine it wants to power, so we had to work out what was the biggest we could fit into that size,» says Miezītis.

PROTOTECH is a prototyping programme created by the Technology Business Centre of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, which provides support to natural and legal persons in the design and development of prototypes of science-intensive technology products or services, in cooperation with leading Latvian universities - RTU, University of Latvia and Riga Stradiņš University. The project is implemented under the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 Programme «Entrepreneurship Development, Innovation and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises».

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