Husarion News from the European Robotics Forum 2024
European Robotics Forum, held annually in various vibrant European cities, stands as one of the most influential robotics events in Europe, bringing together researchers, industry professionals, and policymakers to discuss the latest advancements, challenges, and opportunities in the field of robotics.
This year, Husarion proudly showcased its well-proven robust mobile robotic platforms - Panther and ROSbot XL - at ERF 2024 in Rimini, Italy, captivating a broad audience of European robotics professionals and innovators.
If you didn’t have a chance to meet us in person, make sure to check out the short description of the solutions we presented and take a look at the video from our booth. And if you have any questions about our solutions, don’t hesitate to drop us an email at contact@husarion.com.
Husarion stands for robust mobile platforms for outdoor use cases
We couldn’t possibly show up at ERF 2024 without Panther - our industrial grade, professional UGV designed with an outdoor environment in mind, running on ROS 2.
We knew that thanks to the ease of integration with various components, Panther can be used for tasks across a wide range of industries, but we weren’t prepared for such a variety of mobile robotics projects that our visitors were working on: from pipeline and offshore inspection, through ship recycling, weeding and even archaeology.
We can’t wait to see Panther implemented in all those use cases, as we truly believe there’s no better choice for a demanding environment. And the reactions of our visitors as we discussed some of the most important features of our platform - four independent, powerful BLDC motors, an 100 kg payload capacity, high water resistance with an IP66 protection rating, and a Li-Ion battery with 8 hours of operating time - only served to confirm this belief.
We didn’t lack people asking about our demo, visualization of data from Luxonis camera and Ouster lidar in a web-based Foxglove user interface, and an intriguing new piece of equipment on the robot - a wireless charging station from WiBotic, which we recently introduced to our offer.
And during breaks from working at the booth, Panther also had time for some leisure activities: hanging out with fellow mobile robots and… taking part in a charity run.
…and for indoor research
ERF 2024 was another opportunity to see live demonstration of ROSbot XL - a compact, ROS 2-native autonomous mobile robot designed for custom indoor use cases, research, and rapid prototyping.
The robot offers a high-capacity power supply and computing platform flexibility, allowing for easy replacement of the default Single Board Computer (Intel NUC, Raspberry Pi 4 or Nvidia Orin) with any other SBC depending on the demands of specific use cases. ROSbot XL also features an independent motor with an encoder for each wheel, enabling the easy replacement of its regular wheels with mecanum ones, facilitating movement in any direction.
Thanks to its modular electronic design and universal mounting plate, the robot can be easily integrated with various external components. All these features were of importance to the visitors at our booth, looking for platforms for their innovative projects in human-robot interaction, autonomous navigation, path planning, fleet management and robot-manipulator cooperation.
Once again, we fielded numerous questions about our autonomous navigation demo based on Nav2, conveniently packaged in Docker and visualized in a web-based Foxglove user interface, as well as our mobile manipulation setup with OpenMANIPULATOR-X. We were also excited to present a complete set of online open-source ROS 2 tutorials designed for ROSbot XL, particularly interesting to clients seeking platforms for their robotics classes.
For those interested in even smaller platforms, our ROSbot 2R designed for research & education could be seen not only at our booth, but also in the challenge area, where the student team AGH Drone Engineering used it in cooperation with their custom-made drone.
And European robotics stands for people
Although the exhibition hall of ERF was filled with amazing robots, it was the people who made this event so special.
We were delighted to meet our partners and distributors, including representatives from Edu4Industry, Kinova, The Construct and Generation Robots. We also couldn’t miss a long chat with our friend from Canonical about the benefits of software deployment with snaps.
To all those who visited our booth, we can’t say anything else but: thank you! We really enjoyed all the conversations about your great mobile robotics projects and can’t wait for next year to chat and continue creating the future of European robotics together.
And to all those whom we didn’t have a chance to talk to this year, we keep our fingers crossed that we will have an opportunity to meet at ERF 2025! In the meantime, we are always open to all your questions and concerns at contact@husarion.com.