Field robotics focuses on automating complex tasks through robotic platforms operating in outdoor, dynamic, unstructured, and often harsh environments. This includes diverse settings such as agriculture, search-and-rescue missions, construction sites, forests, underwater exploration, and mining operations. These scenarios are characterized by variability, uncertainty, and limited infrastructure, requiring robots to adapt in real time to unforeseen changes. In recent years, field robotics has seen substantial advancements, driven by progress in robotic hardware, advanced control and perception methodologies, artificial intelligence, sensor and computational technologies, which have enhanced the capabilities of robotic systems, enabling more effective perception, planning, and decision-making in complex environments.
Despite these advancements, field robotics remains a highly challenging domain.
Among the key open problems that this workshop aims to discuss there are:
- The design of robust and adaptive control, planning and algorithms capable of responding to real-time changes and uncertainties;
- The development of advanced perception systems that can use noisy, multimodal sensor data under adverse conditions such as occlusion, poor lighting, or GPS-denied settings;
- The development of durable and reliable robots that can operate autonomously and continuously in harsh and variable conditions, considering limited energy resources;
- The effective identification and handling of possible faults and the interaction with humans to support supervision, intervention, and improved mission outcomes.