The Kick-off-Meeting of the HORIZON 2020 project BADGER (Robot for
Autonomous underground trenchless operations, mapping and navigation) was held on
16-17th January in Madrid. This is one of the few funded projects in
the last LEIT ICT 25 2016 Call (7,4% of success). The RoboticsLab of the
University Carlos III of Madrid (ES) leads the project with the following partners:
University of Glasgow (UK), CERTH (GR), IDS Geo (I), SingularLogic (GR), Tracto
Technik (D), ROBOTNIK (ES). The main objective of the project is the design and
development of the autonomous underground robotic system that can drill,
manoeuvre, localise, map and navigate in the underground space, and which will
be equipped with tools for constructing horizontal and vertical networks stable
bores and pipelines. Its main applications are for trenchless construction of
subterranean small-diameter and highly curved tunnels for water & gas
pipes, telecoms cables, etc.