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Autonomous Mobile Machines Group

Where teamwork and collaboration thrives!

Research Infrastructure

Our infrastructure and facilities consist of a shared proving grounds for mobile machinery, mobile machines, hardware, and software systems.

Proving Grounds for Mobile Machinery

Top view drone camera image of proving grounds with different features labelled by text in the image.
Proving Grounds for Mobile Machinery

Our proving grounds for mobile machinery, which is also shared by the Innovative Hydraulics & Automation research group, encompasses an area of 10,000 m² with 60 m² elevated control room, with 5G and fiber optic internet connectivity.

Key features (Refer to Figure 1 below or watch the 1-minute video tour):

  • Asphalt, gravel, and snow (in winter): 400 m track.
  • 2x Secure parking garages.
  • 3x Graded inclines (10%, 16%, and 32%).
  • 2x Elevated sand mounds.
  • 1x Gravel pit for traversability testing.
  • 1x Earth Moving (pile loading and dumping) area.
  • 1x Forestry logging area.

Mobile Machinery

Wheel Loaders: 3

  1. Avant 635
    Diesel, Operating weight: 2.6t.
  2. Volvo L25 Electric
    Fully electric, Operating weight: 5t.
  3. M12 based on Wille 665C
    Diesel, Operating weight: 6t.

Forestry Forwarder: 1

  • Ponsse Caribou, 8×8
    Diesel, Operating weight: 12.8t.
  • HiBoom, based on HIAM XS 111
    11 tonne-meter class.

Autonomous Mobile Robots: 2

  1. Rover, custom built, 4×4 outdoor skid steer
    Electric, Payload: 100 kg.
  2. MiR 100, indoor AMR
    Electric, Payload: 100 kg.

Hardware

Sensors

  • Cameras: 23 (Stereo: 14, Mono: 4, RGB-D: 2, ToF: 3
    • Zed (Zed, mini, 2i, X), Realsense (D435, T265, L515), MS Kinect Azure, IFM.
  • Lidars: 12 (Mechanical: 6, Solid-state: 6)
    • Ouster OS0, Robosense (Bpearl, RS-Helios-16P), Velodyne VP-16, Velarray M1500.
    • Horizontal FoV: 360°, Vertical FoV: –15° to +90°.
    • Points per second: 200k to 5.2M
    • Range: 30m to 150m.
  • Radars: 5
    • TI AWR2243, Cascaded mmWave, 76–81 GHz FMCW MIMO 4D imaging radar.
    • Bosch Off-Highway, 76–77 GHz, 4D FMCW imaging radar.
    • Vayyar, Multi‑band 3–81 GHz UWB RF, 4D imaging MIMO radar‑on‑chip.
  • IMUs: 2
    •  Xsens (MTi-630 AHRS & MTi-320 AHT), 9-axis.
  • GNSS: 2
    • Xsens MTi-680, RTK GNSS/INS.
    • Xsens Vision Navigator, Dual‑RTK GNSS/INS with VIO.

High Performance Computing (HPC)

  1. Neuron
    Neuron is the HPC server dedicated exclusively to supporting the computational demands of the Autonomous Mobile Machines Group. It is configured with multiple GPUs (12 GB NVIDIA RTX 4070 and two 16 GB NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti accelerators), 96 GB of RAM, 40 TB of storage, and an Intel Core i9 processor. Neuron is utilised when a regular computer is inadequate for computationally intensive workloads.
  2. Tampere Center for Scientific Computing (TCSC)
    For computational workloads beyond Neuron’s capacity, we use Tampere University’s TCSC research infrastructure. TCSC provides a high‑performance Linux cluster with a 400 GbE internal network, over 100 TB of high‑speed storage, and both, CPU and GPU resources for high performance computing.
  3. CSC – IT Center for Science
    For computational workloads that exceed the capabilities of TCSC, we can also access Finland’s national high‑performance computing (HPC) infrastructure operated by CSC. CSC provides large‑scale HPC resources and supercomputers to support scientific research, education, and innovation across Finland.

Embedded Computers

  • Syslogic: Rugged Edge AI Computer RPC RML A4AGX: 2
  • Nvidia Jetson:
    • Orin: 2, Xavier NX: 3, Xavier AGX: 3, Nano: 3

Drone (UAV)

DJI Air 3S: Dual‑camera system, equipped with GNSS.
Images: 50 MP wide-angle, 48 MP medium‑tele.
Video: 4K/120 fps 10‑bit video. Weight: 724 g

 

Laser Tracker: Coordinate Measurement

Leica Absolute Tracker AT960 
6DoF laser tracker, detection range: 80 m.
Distance accuracy: ±10 µm.
Points per second: 1000 pts/s.

Software Systems

Programming Languages & Development Tools

Python, C++, VS Code, GitHub, R, WSL, CUDA, SLURM, & Meld. We use VIM too.

Robotics, Engineering, & Simulation

ROS/ROS2, Carla, Roadrunner, Matlab, Simulink, Amesim, Mevea, Mujoco, AGX Dynamics, SolidWorks, & Ansys.

AI Platforms & LLMs

Weights & Biases, Jax, Pytorch, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, & Gemini.

Scientific Writing & Reference Management

LaTeX, Overleaf, Microsoft Office, Zotero, Xournal++, & Joplin.

Graphics & Media

GNU Image (GIMP), Inkscape, Kazam, & OBS Studio.