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Facilities

The Autonomous Robots and Systems Laboratory (ARSL) maintains dedicated experimental and fabrication facilities that support research in robotics, autonomous vehicles and intelligent systems. These spaces enable the design, integration and testing of air, ground and marine robotic platforms, as well as the development of sensing, control and autonomy algorithms in realistic laboratory and field environments.

ARSL Duke Lab (Room 370)

The ARSL Duke Lab is a space dedicated to the fabrication, integration, and testing of robotic systems and related control algorithms. The lab has several workbenches with a variety of fabrication tools (e.g., benchtop drill press, bandsaw, 3D printer, power and hand tools), electronics equipment (DC power supplies, oscilloscopes, multimeters, soldering station, etc.), and assorted robotic sensors, communication/radio equipment, micro-controllers, autopilots, and embedded computers. A high-performance Linux workstation is available for simulation and data analysis (AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-core CPU, 2.9 GHz, 256 GB RAM).

ARSL BATT Cave Lab (Room 124)

The ARSL BATT CAVE Lab is a 270 sq. ft. area focusing on marine robotics and includes a large water tank housed in a larger 9,000 sq. ft. high bay with 30 ft. high ceilings. The marine robotics testbed is a custom-built 5,000 gallon water tank with two large acrylic viewports and is instrumented with a positioning and communication system to control a fleet of miniaturized unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The facility supports controlled laboratory experiments investigating cooperative control of multi-vehicle systems, bio-inspired robotics, and testing of subsystems/components of larger (outdoor) marine robots and marine systems such as wave energy converters.

Batt Cave Lab

Robotic Platforms and Sensors

The ARSL has several off-the-shelf and student-built air, ground, and marine robots, including:

  • Seafloor Systems Hydrone USV
  • Two custom-built autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) with various sensor options, including a single-beam echo sounder (Blue Robotics Ping), low-cost side-scan sonar (Humminbird Helix 9 with SARHAWK), and YSI EXO2 Multiparameter Water Quality Sonde (dissolved oxygen, algae, turbidity, temperature)
  • Clearpath robotics Jackal (Ouster OS1 LiDAR, stereo cameras, and Intel Realsense depth camera)
  • Blue Robotics ROV
  • Three QAV 500 V2 custom-built quadrotor drones with Trisonica mini 3-axis anemometers
  • DJI FPV Drone
  • MiniUUV: a custom-built miniature underwater vehicle
  • Fixed-wing GT Zohd Talon UAV with gimbaled RGB camera
  • Swarm of indoor Crazyflie 2.0 drones with Loco Positioning System
  • Emlid RTK GNSS
  • SIYI ZR10 3-axis gimbaled camera, FLIR BlackFlyS cameras