When a lab issue temporarily shuts down a corridor, Jackal doesn’t miss a beat. A quick reroute, and you’re back on track, heading toward the next stop on your tour.
But here’s the twist: Jackal isn’t human. This guide is actually a Jackal Unmanned Ground Vehicle — a compact, two-foot-long, 20-pound robot with a mind programmed for precision. Designed to move seamlessly through Bannow and beyond, Jackal’s purpose goes beyond tours. With ongoing programming, Jackal is being trained to traverse not just Bannow’s corridors but eventually the entire campus, redefining what it means to explore ¾«¶«´«Ã½.
“Our aim is to program Jacky, as we call him, to autonomously navigate the corridors of Bannow using a mix of advanced technology, including GPS, LiDAR sensors, and RGB cameras,” explained research assistant William Ehlers ’27, a computer science and finance double major who is working with Sidike Paheding, PhD, assistant professor and principal investigator of the AI Lab. Ehlers’ job is to ensure the upkeep and progression of Jacky’s wireless systems, the advancement of its sensors, and to facilitate the integration of AI algorithms. “With the machine learning algorithm, Jacky should be able to conduct tours of the school in a year or two,” he projected.
Though unmanned robots are not new (think Roombas and aerial drones), this work in the AI Lab gives students an opportunity to take theoretical classroom knowledge and put it to use in a practical manner. “Our goal is not about revolutionizing the mechanics of how a robot operates,” Dr. Paheding said. “It’s about the actions we want to embed in the robot. By leveraging advancements in AI, we are striving for greater precision in perceiving and responding to its surroundings.”
Unmanned robots like Jacky will have practical applications in the future, said Dr. Paheding. Take a building collapse, for example. In that case, “a search and rescue robot could use SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology to create a map of the remnants of the building, and with optical sensors and AI algorithms detect and localize any life form so that rescuers could pinpoint that person exactly.” That scenario is just five years away, he predicted.
Advancing the capabilities of robots to self-navigate in real-world environments paves the way for innovations in industries such as logistics and environmental monitoring, as well as search and rescue, he said. It won’t be long before robots will be able to interact more with humans—including the ability to chat, understand natural language commands, and respond to voice inputs.
