Uni of Queensland’s VisLab tests robot dog for mapping

The research team brings together Dr Jurij Karlovsek, Assoc Prof Fred Fialho Teixeira, Dr Qianbin Xu, Dr Thien-Minh Nguyen and Dr Tyson Phillips, with Rui Zhang and Mohan Ren.

The initial trial examined an accessibility route between the VisLab and the UQ ferry terminal.

The research uses a Unitree Go2 quadruped robot, nicknamed QiuQiu, provided by Dr Nguyen, alongside complementary spatial capture technologies.

The team combined the robot’s internal motion data, its front facing camera and a 360-degree camera mounted on its back with handheld scanning, in which a researcher walked the same route carrying a handheld LiDAR scanner. This allowed researchers to compare robotic data collection with handheld scanning, and to investigate what additional spatial information each can capture.

Joining QiuQiu on the walk was Milo, a real dog, who left the measuring to the robot and carried out his own survey of the route.