Sensor System for Rescue Robots

A majority of rescue worker fatalities are a result of on-scene responses. Existing technologies help assist the first responders in scenarios of no light, and there even exist robots that can navigate radioactive areas. However, none are able to be both quickly deployable and enter hard to reach or unsafe areas in an emergency event such as an earthquake or storm that damages a structure. In this project we created a sensor platform system to augment existing robotic solutions so that rescue workers can search for people in danger while avoiding preventable injury or death and saving time and resources. Our results showed that we were able to map out a 2D map of the room with updates for robot motion on a display while also showing a live thermal image in front of the system. The system is also capable of taking a digital picture from a triggering event and then displaying it on the computer screen. We discovered that data transfer plays a huge role in making different programs like Arduino and Processing interact with each other. Consequently, this needs to be accounted for when improving our project. In particular our project is wired right now but should deliver data wirelessly to be of any practical use. Furthermore, we dipped our feet into SLAM technologies and if our project were to become autonomous, more research into the algorithms would make this autonomy feasible

Development of a separable search-and-rescue robot composed of a mobile robot and a snake robot

In this study, we propose a new robot system consisting of a mobile robot and a snake robot. The system works not only as a mobile manipulator but also as a multi-agent system by using the snake robot's ability to separate from the mobile robot. Initially, the snake robot is mounted on the mobile robot in the carrying mode. When an operator uses the snake robot as a manipulator, the robot changes to the manipulator mode. The operator can detach the snake robot from the mobile robot and command the snake robot to conduct lateral rolling motions. In this paper, we present the details of our robot and its performance in the World Robot Summit

Autonomous biomimitic robot based multi-agent system for disaster management and rescue

This paper discusses the scope and feasibility of autonomous biomimitic robot based multi-agent systems for disaster management and rescue. Search and rescue operations in disastrous situations like earthquake, landslide, fire hazards, mineshaft breakdown etc. are still handled manually. Manual operations in these cases often fail due to complicated nature of the catastrophe. Especially in the case of human entrapment in areas inaccessible to either human or traditional rescue equipment. As such rescue operation suffers from improper strategy and even leads to unintentional further destruction due to lack of proper information along the rescue site. It is clear, proper information in and around the disaster can help successful handling of the catastrophe. Thus information like location of the survivor, state of the obstructions around him/her, state of injury, level of oxygen and hazardous gases are of crucial importance. To gather such widespread information from such difficult terrain, autonomous robots equipped with multiple sensors and capable to move inside difficult to access areas is a good choice. Autonomous biomimitic robot like Snake robot is meant to mimic motion of a natural snake, which does not possess any limb. Natural snakes can undergo wide range of motion and are able to move over rough terrains without the danger of entanglement. Slender structure of the snake body helps a snake to go inside narrow holes. Thus a snake robot able to mimic these features of a natural snake will be of extreme use in handling search and rescue operations. Snake robots equipped with multiple sensors and controlled under multiagent collaborative protocol are expected to bring about acceptable solution to disaster management and rescue. The other such biomimitic robots that can be considered in the autonomous robot team are flapping wing flyers and robot Monkeys. A team consisting of such robots will help in collecting information, distributing food and medicine in disastrous location

Sound source localization through shape reconfiguration in a snake robot

This paper describes a snake robot system that uses sound source localization. We show in this paper as to how we can localize a sound source in 3D and solve the classic forward backward problem in sound source localization using minimum number of audio sensors by using the multiple degrees of freedom of the snake robot. We describe the hardware and software architecture of the robot and show the results of several sound tracking experiments we did with our snake robot. We also present biologically inspired sound tracking behavior in different postures of a biological snake robot as "Digital Snake Charming"

Task-Space Control of Articulated Mobile Robots With a Soft Gripper for Operations

A task-space method is presented for the control of a head-raising articulated mobile robot, allowing the trajectory tracking of a tip of a gripper located on the head of the robot in various operations, e.g., picking up an object and rotating a valve. If the robot cannot continue moving because it reaches a joint angle limit, the robot moves away from the joint limit and changes posture by switching the allocation of lifted/grounded wheels. An articulated mobile robot with a gripper that can grasp objects using jamming transition was developed, and experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller in operations

Development and Control of Articulated Mobile Robot for Climbing Steep Stairs

In this paper, we develop an articulated mobile robot that can climb stairs, and also move in narrow spaces and on 3-D terrain. This paper presents two control methods for this robot. The first is a 3-D steering method that is used to adapt the robot to the surrounding terrain. In this method, the robot relaxes its joints, allowing it to adapt to the terrain using its own weight, and then, resumes its motion employing the follow-the-leader method. The second control method is the semi-autonomous stair climbing method. In this method, the robot connects with the treads of the stairs using a body called a connecting part, and then shifts the connecting part from its head to its tail. The robot then uses the sensor information to shift the connecting part with appropriate timing. The robot can climb stairs using this method even if the stairs are steep, and the sizes of the riser and the tread of the stairs are unknown. Experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods and the developed robot

Range-Sensor-Based Semiautonomous Whole-Body Collision Avoidance of a Snake Robot

This brief presents a control system for a snake robot based on range sensor data that semiautonomously aids the robot in avoiding collisions with obstacles. In the proposed system, an operator indicates the desired velocity of the first link of the robot using a joystick, and the joint input which accomplishes both the desired velocity of the first link and collision avoidance between subsequent links and obstacles is automatically calculated by the controller, which selects the links needed to be grounded and exploits redundancy. The controller uses real-time data from range sensors for obstacle positions. The experimental system, which has range sensors and the function generating environmental map using simultaneous localization and mapping, was developed with decreasing calculation cost, and experiments were performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system in unknown environments