  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 project 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.
