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N. Hawes, C. Burbridge, F. Jovan, L. Kunze, B. Lacerda, L. Mudrova, J. Young, J. Wyatt, D. Hebesberger, T. Körtner, R. Ambrus, N. Bore, J. Folkesson, P. Jensfelt, L. Beyer, A. Hermans, B. Leibe, A. Aldoma Buchaca, T. Fäulhammer, M. Zillich, M. Vincze, E. Chinellato, M. Al-Omari, P. Duckworth, Y. Gatsoulis, D. Hogg, A. Cohn, C. Dondrup, J. Pulido Fentanes, T. Krajnik, J. Santos, T. Duckett, M. Hanheide et al.:
"The STRANDS Project: Long-Term Autonomy in Everyday Environments";
Arxiv, 2016 (2016), 1 - 14.

Thanks to the efforts of the robotics and autonomous systems community, robots are becoming ever
more capable. There is also an increasing demand from end-users for autonomous service robots that can
operate in real environments for extended periods. In the STRANDS project1 we are tackling this demand
head-on by integrating state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and robotics research into mobile service
robots, and deploying these systems for long-term installations in security and care environments. Over
four deployments, our robots have been operational for a combined duration of 104 days autonomously
performing end-user defined tasks, covering 116km in the process. In this article we describe the approach
we have used to enable long-term autonomous operation in everyday environments, and how our robots
are able to use their long run times to improve their own performance.