Public safety and security research is of increasing interest and importance both nationally and internationally. WARA-PS promotes research in collaborative heterogenous agents and systems of systems, acting in public safety related scenarios to keep society safe.
WARA-Public Safety explores new technical solutions to showcase advances in Autonomous Systems and Software research by providing an arena that focuses on teams of humans and systems acting and interacting in a distributed context, supporting human authority, and benefitting from functions with various degree of autonomy.
Public safety related scenarios offer a broad context in which humans, autonomous agents and systems can face a variety of challenges, including search and rescue missions, surveillance, and transportation.
WARA-PS acts as both a virtual testbed, by providing remote access to simulators and virtual agents, as well as a physical arena in which we perform real life tests, demonstrations, and data collections with PhD students in close collaboration with the industry and government institutions.
Our Community and Core Team
WARA-PS has a fast-growing community consisting of several industries acting within the domain of public safety, universities from all over the world, as well as the government, creating a full triple helix. The community offers a unique collection of resources and competences, all available to our researchers.
In the center of the arena is the Core Team, a group of representatives from both the industry and academia, working closely with researchers to provide new technology, integration, and data collections on site or remotely. The Core Team offers high flexibility and availability, acting as points of contact as well as orchestrating tests and demonstrations where we showcase the progress of the arena to the community and visitors.
Photo by Peter Karlsson – Svarteld form & foto AB
Resources
WARA-PS provides multiple unique resources that can be used for research and data collection purposes. The resources include manned and unmanned aerial, surface, sub-surface, and ground vehicles equipped with sensors and advanced positioning systems. In addition to the real world resources, WARA-PS offers the ability to conduct tests and simulations through our virtual platforms with simulated agents.
The resources can be integrated into the Core System which provides an infrastructure made up by agents, services, and systems, which in turn supports system research. To guide researchers through their use of the available resources, WARA-PS offers workshops and onboardings as well as tutorials and documentation in our portal.
Photo by Peter Karlsson – Svarteld form & foto AB
For PhD students
In addition to the systems, hardware and data sets available in the arena, WARA-PS provides a network that supports the reseachers. Furthermore, WARA-PS arranges activities such as data collections and field tests as well as project courses and a summer school where PhD students get the opportunity to perform practical experiments utilizing the arena resources. The PhD students can then demonstrate and test their results during our yearly event attended by other WASP affiliates as well as representatives from both academia and the industry.
Photo by Peter Karlsson – Svarteld form & foto AB
WARA-PS is open to PhD students conducting research in a variety of domains, with new PhD students joining the arena and our growing community every year.
Areas of research include:
- Human AI Teaming
- Collaborating Agents
- Vehicle Control
- Perception
- Cyber Security
Please visit the portal.waraps.org if you are interested in learning more and connecting with us.
Hear some of our PhD students share their experiences from participating in WARA–PS in the videos below.
The research-equipped CB90 boat is a well known participant at WARA-PS. And it comes with an exclusive feature – crash stop. Photo: Thor Balkhed, Linköping University