Noise does not always scale with size.  At the miniature scale, the effects of uncertainty, disturbances and random perturbations on robot motion are amplified.  They can be significant enough to throw the local controllers out of their domain of attraction and result to mission failure.  Especially at these scales, uncertainty and its propagation should either be taken into account directly in control design, or at least their effect on mission success probability should be assessed.

To effectively explore uneven, cluttered and unknown terrain, miniature robots often need to go beyond where their wheels or legs can take them.  Novel designs are integrating bio-inspired mobility features and capabilities to extend the operational envelope of ground mobile robots.

Verifying the presence of very weak (possibly shielded) nuclear material using passive radiation detectors (e.g., Geiger counters) is extremely challenging because the signal to be detected is buried in background noise.  Mobile robots can close the distance between sensor and source, boosting the signal to noise ratio, and in conjunction with optimal detection algorithms can offer us the best possible guess if a suspect in motion is friend or foe.

The OpenROV is an inexpensive open underwater robotics experimental platform.  Through evolutionary design modifications, we have been developing our own version of the popular platform.  It currently features a stereo camera, IMU, compass, depth sensors, and ROS interfaces.