Dr. Geert De Cubber

The ICARUS EU-FP7 project deals with the development of a set of integrated components to assist search and rescue teams in dealing with the difficult and dangerous, but life-saving task of finding human survivors. The ICARUS tools consist of assistive unmanned air, ground and sea vehicles, equipped with victim detection sensors. The unmanned vehicles collaborate as a coordinated team, communicating via ad-hoc cognitive radio networking. To ensure optimal human-robot collaboration, these tools are seamlessly integrated into the C4I (command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence) equipment of the human crisis managers and a set of training and support tools is provided to them to learn to use the ICARUS system.

1 September 2019

Conference Paper

Drone-vs-Bird Detection Challenge at IEEE AVSS2019

Angelo Coluccia

Alessio Fascista

Arne Schumann

Lars Sommer

Marian Ghenescu

Iago Gonzalez

+17

This paper presents the second edition of the “drone-vs-bird” detection challenge, launched within the activities of the 16-th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal-based Surveillance (AVSS). The challenge's goal is to detect one or more drones appearing at some point in video sequences where birds may be also present, together with motion in background or foreground. Submitted algorithms should raise an alarm and provide a position estimate only when a drone is present, while not issuing alarms on birds, nor being confused by the rest of the scene. This paper reports on the challenge results on the 2019 dataset, which extends the first edition dataset provided by the SafeShore project with additional footage under different conditions.

23 August 2017

Book Chapter

Introduction to the Use of Robotic Tools for Search and Rescue

Geert De Cubber

Daniela Doroftei

Konrad Rudin

Karsten Berns

Anibal Matos

Stephane Ourevitch

Modern search and rescue workers are equipped with a powerful toolkit to address natural and man-made disasters. This introductory chapter explains how a new tool can be added to this toolkit: robots. The use of robotic assets in search and rescue operations is explained and an overview is given of the worldwide efforts to incorporate robotic tools in search and rescue operations. Furthermore, the European Union ICARUS project on this subject is introduced. The ICARUS project proposes to equip first responders with a comprehensive and integrated set of unmanned search and rescue tools, to increase the situational awareness of human crisis managers, such that more work can be done in a shorter amount of time. The ICARUS tools consist of assistive unmanned air, ground, and sea vehicles, equipped with victim-detection sensors. The unmanned vehicles collaborate as a coordinated team, communicating via ad hoc cognitive radio networking. To ensure optimal human-robot collaboration, these tools are seamlessly integrated into the command and control equipment of the human crisis managers and a set of training and support tools is provided to them to learn to use the ICARUS system.

1 August 2017

Conference Paper

Drone-vs-Bird detection challenge at IEEE AVSS2017

Angelo Coluccia

Marian Ghenescu

Tomas Piatrik

Geert De Cubber

Arne Schumann

Michael Blumenstein

+12

Small drones are a rising threat due to their possible misuse for illegal activities, in particular smuggling and terrorism. The project SafeShore, funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program, has launched the “drone-vs-bird detection challenge” to address one of the many technical issues arising in this context. The goal is to detect a drone appearing at some point in a video where birds may be also present: the algorithm should raise an alarm and provide a position estimate only when a drone is present, while not issuing alarms on birds. This paper reports on the challenge proposal, evaluation, and results.

About Me

Geert De Cubber leads the Robotics & Autonomous Systems unit in the Mechanics department of the Belgian Royal Military Academy and is a senior researcher specializing in robotic solutions for security challenges, including crisis management, crime and terrorism, and border security. He earned his Mechanical Engineering degree in 2001 and his Doctorate in Engineering in 2010 from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the Belgian Royal Military Academy (RMA). Geert has coordinated multiple European and national research projects, such as FP7-ICARUS (search and rescue robots), H2020-SafeShore (threat detection systems), and COURAGEOUS (standard test methodology for C-UAS tools). He is also the principal investigator for international research projects like STARS*EU and ASSETs+. His research focuses on methodologies for the perception and control of multi-agent robotic systems across air, land, and maritime domains, aiming to enhance the collaborative capabilities of robotic systems in understanding their environment. Applications include crisis management robots, humanitarian demining robots, and surveillance robots for challenging environments.Geert is active in the robotics and computer vision community, organizing several conferences and workshops, and has published over 100 scientific papers.

Dr. Geert De Cubber

Dr. Geert De Cubber

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