European Land-Robot Trial

The ELROB is not a competition, like the US DARPA Grand Challenge, but a pure demonstration of what European robotics is able to achieve today.

This forces the participating teams and systems to fulfil high requirements set by the real world scenarios.

The first ELROB in 2006 was organized by the German Federal Armed Forces and took place on the infantry training area near Hammelburg, 15–18 May 2006.

The goal of the first trial was to boost the development of unmanned ground vehicles that could be used in military missions on short notice.

European Robotics and the NATO Research Task Group "Military Applications for Multi-Robot Systems" came up with the idea for ELROB in the year 2004.

Most teams do not see C-ELROB as competition or as demonstration, but as possibility to prove their own systems in a challenging field test and new surroundings.

ELROB is explicitly designed to shape the direction of R&D for the short and medium term and aims to fertilize the co-operation between research and SMEs.

From 2013 till 2015, instead of C-ELROB the newly created EURATHLON trial will take place, a robot competition supported by the European Commission in the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The location for the scenario is kept secret until short before the start of the trials and therefore the teams have no chance to generate a detailed map of the area (for example with laser range finders) ahead of their run.

The area of the trials was part of the truck test track of the Swiss army which meant very difficult ground for the vehicles.

The second was placed in non urban area with higher requirements on the off-road mobility of the vehicles and the third one concentrated on the combination of UGVs and UAVs.

Additionally, all points of interest and the intruders in the "Camp Security" scenario were marked with ERICards, because computer vision was no focus of the trials.

Therefore, the scenarios simulate real world missions as close as possible which is reflected by the fact that members of the Bundeswehr are part of the organisation committee.

M-ELROB is explicitly designed to assess current technology to solve real world problems at hand.

The "Transport Convoy" mission requests at least two vehicles to be navigated, as fast as possible, to a target position which is several kilometres away.

Again, the M-ELROB 2008 took place in Hammelburg on the training area of the infantry school of the German Forces from 30 June till 3 July.

But it took place on a different part of the training area which was more challenging and hindered radio communication because of the dense forest.

Additionally one special session of the "Reconnaissance and Surveillance" scenario took place at night time, so vision systems were unusable.

The results of ELROB 2008 showed that remote controlled UGVs are more or less ready for deployment, but the radio communication places severe constraints on the usability of such systems.

With semi autonomous assistance functions, like e.g. waypoint navigation, the robot system is much more useful while encountering bad radio communication.

The military ELROB 2012 took place from September 24 to 28 2012 on the training area of the Swiss Army near Thun in Switzerland.