Autonomous Safety Mechanism for Building: Fire Fighter Robot with Localized Fire Extinguisher

With advent of robotics technology in the modern days, the use of fire bucket to put up a small fire is seen as outdated. The autonomous approach (by using robots) in safe guarding the human environment building from potential hazard such as fire is deemed necessary. Big fire can be prevented by detecting small fire as quickly as possible. Fire detection device in a building needs to be reliable and effective. Autonomous system can be leveraged to accomplish the hazard detection without human supervision. Moreover, if the hazard eradication follows the detection in an autonomous mode, the solution has a profound impact to the safety of a building. A conceptual Fire Fighter Robot prototype is proposed in this paper. The dynamic model of the conceptual robot is derived. The control system based on nonlinear feedback control is designed to control the movement of the robot when dispersing the sand to put out the fire source. The designed autonomous system detects small flame in a confined area and put it out before it turns to big fire and spreads. A microcontroller, forming the brain of the robot, is coded with a supervisory control algorithm integrated with flame sensor modules are used for the detection of flame. The robot scans the room from front to back and vice versa. When flame is detected, the robot is deployed to directly above the flame source. Sand is used to extinguish the flame by targeting precise location of flame source. At the same time, the alarm will ring and send the message to the owner via Wi-Fi. The robot is capable of extinguishing fire from chemical substances and petrol. Sensitivity of flame sensors at different environment with different brightness is tested through analog reading of the serial monitor

Desenvolvimento de um robô para combate a fogos num cenário de simulação

Trabalho final de mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia MecânicaNa presente dissertação aborda-se o desenvolvimento de um robô móvel demonstrativo das funcionalidades necessárias ao combate a incêndios. Em resumo, o robô deve ter a capacidade de explorar um ambiente desconhecido, com vista a detetar a zona de incêndio e extinguir o foco de incêndio por meios mecânicos. Para tal, recorreu-se a um sistema de navegação autónomo sustentado na fusão sensorial entre um sensor rangefinder e a odometria. Pretende-se que este sistema conduza um robô móvel através de um labirinto (que simula uma habitação) explorando-o na totalidade, ao mesmo tempo que evita embater nas paredes e noutros obstáculos. Para além da navegação, existem outros sistemas importantes no robô, como o sistema de deteção da chama e o sistema para a sua extinção. O primeiro utiliza como sensor uma câmara termográfica que permite detetar a presença da chama. No sistema de extinção, é utilizada uma ventoinha que será acionada com base na informação recebida por parte da câmara termográfica.Abstract: The present dissertation addresses the development of a mobile robot that is demonstrative of the features needed for firefighting. In short, the robot should be able to explore an unfamiliar environment, with the goal of detecting the zone of fire and extinguishing the fire outbreak by mechanical means. To this end, we developed an autonomous navigation system based on the sensory fusion of a rangefinder sensor and odometry. This system is intended to drive a mobile robot through a maze (which simulates a housing) to fully explore it, while avoiding the walls and other obstacles. Besides navigation, there are other important systems in the robot, namely the flame detection and the extinction systems. The first uses a thermal camera as the sensor to detect the existenceof a flame. The extinguishing system comprises, a fan that is triggered by the information of the thermal camera.N/

Performance of UWB Wireless Telecommunication Positioning for Disaster Relief Communication Environment Securing

When an earthquake or a large fire has occurred, it is difficult to secure communication networks for rescue in the building due to the destruction of commercial communication networks. Although analog radio systems such as VHF (Very High Frequency) and UHF (Ultra-High Frequency) are used for rescue operation in general, communication failure occurs in closed spaces, causing difficulties in smooth rescue operations. When the communication infrastructures have been destroyed in a building in the disaster, an emergency wireless telecommunication environment should be constructed to secure a safer disaster response environment. In this study, along with comparison of the performances of diverse communication frequencies, UWB (Ultra-Wide Band) wireless telecommunication networks were evaluated under five building indoor environment conditions including open spaces. UWB communication modules were fabricated to satisfy the IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.15.4a standard performance to measure distances in which communications are possible according to the indoor environment for each of six channels with different UWB communication frequencies. The results indicated that the distances in which communications are possible for each the six channels were average 15.5 m, maximum 20 m in open spaces; average 17.33 m, maximum 20 m in corridors; average 15.3 m, maximum 20 m in indoor office environments with office fixtures; average 4.33 m, maximum 6 m in vertical spaces of stairs; and average 6.5 m, maximum 17 m in closed horizontal spaces with a fire door. In this case, the communication performance and distance performance were shown to be the most excellent at a frequency (Centre Frequency) of 6489.6 and a band of 5980.3–6998.9 MHz, which is UWB 7ch. In conclusion, it is judged that if UWB communication modules are installed in the disaster area at intervals of 20 m and multi-channels are used, communication environments can be constructed even in closed spaces

FIRE-FIGHTING ROBOT

Along the way with the evolvement and advancement of science and technology, human beings tend to use robot to perform their daily routine works or some dangerous tasks such as rescuing victims from hazardous sites, whereby the rescuing tasks might pose certain level of risks to human beings. In conjunction of that reason, the ultimate goal, aim and objective of this project is to develop and implement an Autonomous Fire-Fighting Mobile Platform (AFFMP) that is equipped with the basic fire-fighting knowledge that can patrol through the hazardous sites with the aim of early detection for fire and extinguish it using the built-in fire extinguishing system on the platform itself. The AFFMP is capable to patrol the building continuously via the guiding track while at the same time, it attempts to locate for fire source by using the Flame Sensors as the primary detection. The detection for the occurrence of fire source in AFFMP is also assisted by the secondary detection sensors, which are the Heat/Temperature Sensor and the Smoke Sensor as well. Once the fire source is being identified, it will move directly towards the fire source and extinguish it in the shortest time by using the fire extinguisher that is attached to its platform. In short, the project can be considered as successful as it has achieved the expected goals and objectives

FIRE-FIGHTING ROBOT

Along the way with the evolvement and advancement of science and technology, human beings tend to use robot to perform their daily routine works or some dangerous tasks such as rescuing victims from hazardous sites, whereby the rescuing tasks might pose certain level of risks to human beings. In conjunction of that reason, the ultimate goal, aim and objective of this project is to develop and implement an Autonomous Fire-Fighting Mobile Platform (AFFMP) that is equipped with the basic fire-fighting knowledge that can patrol through the hazardous sites with the aim of early detection for fire and extinguish it using the built-in fire extinguishing system on the platform itself. The AFFMP is capable to patrol the building continuously via the guiding track while at the same time, it attempts to locate for fire source by using the Flame Sensors as the primary detection. The detection for the occurrence of fire source in AFFMP is also assisted by the secondary detection sensors, which are the Heat/Temperature Sensor and the Smoke Sensor as well. Once the fire source is being identified, it will move directly towards the fire source and extinguish it in the shortest time by using the fire extinguisher that is attached to its platform. In short, the project can be considered as successful as it has achieved the expected goals and objectives

Enhancement of the Sensory Capabilities of Mobile Robots through Artificial Olfaction

La presente tesis abarca varios aspectos del olfato artificial u olfato robótico, la capacidad de percibir información sobre la composición del aire que rodea a un sistema automático. En primer lugar, se desarrolla una nariz electrónica, un instrumento que combina sensores de gas de bajas prestaciones con un algoritmo de clasificación para medir e identificar gases. Aunque esta tecnología ya existía previamente, se aplica un nuevo enfoque que busca reducir las dimensiones y consumo para poder instalarlas en robots móviles, a la vez que se aumenta el número de gases detectables mediante un diseño modular. Posteriormente, se estudia la estrategia óptima para encontrar fugas de gas con un robot equipado con este tipo de narices electrónicas. Para ello se llevan a cabos varios experimentos basados en teleoperación para entender como afectan los sensores del robot al éxito de la tarea, de lo cual se deriva finalmente un algoritmo para generar con robots autónomos mapas de gas de un entorno dado, el cual se inspira en el comportamiento humano, a saber, maximizar la información conocida sobre el entorno. La principal virtud de este método, además de realizar una exploración óptima del entorno, es su capacidad para funcionar en entornos muy complejos y sujetos a corrientes de vientos mediante un nuevo método que también se presenta en esta tesis. Finalmente, se presentan dos casos de aplicación en los que se identifica de forma automática con una nariz electrónica la calidad subjetiva del aire en entornos urbanos

The development of fire detection robot

Bu tez çalışmasının amacı; özellikle endüstriyel alanlarda, erken yangın algılamada kullanılacak bir yangın algılama robotu tasarlamak ve imal etmektir. Bu robot; önceden belirlenen sanal güzergâh üzerinde engel algılama fonksiyonuyla ve yeniden programlanabilir hareket ünitesiyle devriye gezebilecek ve yangın kaynağını tespit edebilmek için ortam taraması yapabilecek şekilde tasarlanmış ve imal edilmiştir. Sistem; hareket planlama ünitesine tanımlanan programlar ile değişken devriye güzergâhlarını takip edebilme yeteneğine sahiptir. Robotun tasarım ve uygulama süreçleri şu şekildedir; mekanik sistemin tasarımı ve geliştirilmesi, elektronik sistemin tasarımı ve geliştirilmesi ve gerekli yazılımların hazırlanmasıdır. Mekanik sistemin tasarım ve geliştirilme sürecinde; taslak çizimleri, ölçülendirmeler ve üç boyutlu modelleme için bilgisayar destekli tasarım ve katı modelleme programları kullanılmıştır. Robotun taşıyıcı gövdesi; ucuz, sağlam ve kolay işlenebilir malzemeler olan ahşap ve sert plastik köpük kullanılarak imal edilmiştir. Robot sürüş sisteminde diferansiyel metot kullanılmıştır. Yarı otomatik robot dört adet fırçalı doğru akım motoru ile çalışmaktadır. Elektronik sistemin tasarımı ve geliştirilmesi sürecinde; hazır kart almak yerine ihtiyaca uygun elektronik veri kazanım ve kontrol devreleri tasarlanıp üretilmiştir. Bu devrelerin şematik diyagramı ve baskı devresi Proteus elektronik tasarım programı kullanılarak hazırlanmıştır. Bu devreler; motor hareketlerini kontrol etmekte ve dizüstü bilgisayar ile algılama üniteleri arasında bir köprü kurmakta kullanılmıştır. Yazılımların hazırlanma sürecinde; engel algılamada ve güzergâh takibinde kullanılacak akıllı yazılımlar geliştirilmiştir. Ayrıca daha güvenilir yangın algılama sağlamak için; çoklu sensör algılama ve değerlendirme algoritması geliştirilmiştir. Bu tezin sonucunda; özellikle endüstriyel alanlarda kullanılabilecek, çeşitli fonksiyonlara sahip bir yangın algılama robotu tasarlanıp imal edilmiştir. Yapılan testlerle; sistemin en fazla 100 cm mesafedeki yangını, robot 0,5 m/s hızla ilerlerken tespit edebildiği sonucuna varılmıştır.The aim of this thesis is to design and manufacture a fire detection robot that especially operates in industrial areas for fire inspection and early detection. Robot is designed and implemented to track prescribed paths with obstacle avoidance function through obstacle avoidance and motion planning units and to scan the environment in order to detect fire source using fire detection unit. Robot is able to track patrolling routes using virtual lines that defined to the motion planning unit. The design and implementation processes of the robot are as follow; the design and the development of mechanical, electronic systems and software. The design and the development of mechanical system; for the sketch drawings, dimensioning and solid state modeling of the robot, computer aided design and solid modelling computer programs were used. The carrier board of the robot is produced using wooden material and rigid plastic foam which are cheap, strong enough and easy to manufacture. Differential steering method is selected for semi-autonomous robot driving system and it is powered by four brushed DC (direct current) motors. The design and the development of electronic system; electronic circuits were designed and produced, instead of buying a commercial card. Both schematic diagrams and circuits of the data acquisition and control circuits are designed using Proteus electronic design program. These circuits are used to control the motion of the motors and establish a data flow between the laptop and the other peripheral sensing components. Software development; intelligent algorithms for obstacle avoidance and path tracking have been developed. A sensor data fusion algorithm for the sensors was also developed to get more reliable fire detection information. In conclusion; a fire inspection and detection robot with various functions to especially can be used in industrial areas was designed and manufactured. The functions of the robot were tested. It can be concluded that system is able to detect the fire source maximum 100 cm distance away while robot is moving with 0.5 m/s forward speed

Modeling Human-Robot Interaction in Three Dimensions

This dissertation answers the question: Can a small autonomous UAV change a person's movements by emulating animal behaviors? Human-robot interaction (HRI) has generally been limited to engagements with ground robots at human height or shorter, essentially working on the same two dimensional plane, but this ignores potential interactions where the robot may be above the human such as small un- manned aerial vehicles (sUAVs) for crowd control and evacuation or for underwater or space vehicles acting as assistants for divers or astronauts. The dissertation combines two approaches {behavioral robotics and HRI {to create a model of \Comfortable Distance" containing the information about human-human and human-ground robot interactions and extends it to three dimensions. Behavioral robotics guides the ex- amination and transfer of relevant behaviors from animals, most notably mammals, birds, and ying insects, into a computational model that can be programmed in simulation and on a sUAV. The validated model of proxemics in three dimensions makes a fundamental contribution to human-robot interaction. The results also have significant benefit to the public safety community, leading to more effective evacuation and crowd control, and possibly saving lives. Three findings from this experiment were important in regards to sUAVs for evacuation: i) expressions focusing on the person, rather than the area, are good for decreasing time (by 7.5 seconds, p <.0001) and preference (by 17.4 %, p <.0001), ii) personal defense behaviors are best for decreasing time of interaction (by about 4 seconds, p <.004), while site defense behaviors are best for increasing distance of interaction (by about .5 m, p <.003), and iii) Hediger's animal zones may be more applicable than Hall's human social zones when considering interactions with animal behaviors in sUAVs

Hazardous Chemical Source Localisation in Indoor Environments Using Plume-tracing Methods

Bio-inspired chemical plume-tracing methods have been applied to mobile robots to detect chemical emissions in the form of plumes and localise the plume sources in various indoor environments. Nevertheless, it has been found from the literature that most of the research has focused on plume tracing in free-stream plumes, such as indoor plumes where the chemical sources are located away from walls. Moreover, most of the experimental and numerical studies regarding the assessment of indoor plume-tracing algorithms have been undertaken in laboratory-scale environments. Since fluid fields and chemical concentration distributions of plumes near walls can be different from those of free-stream plumes, understanding of the performance of existing plume-tracing algorithms in near-wall regions is needed. In addition, the performance of different plume-tracing algorithms in detecting and tracing wall plumes in large-scale indoor environments is still unclear. In this research, a simulation framework combining ANSYS/FLUENT, which is used for simulating fluid fields and chemical concentration distributions of the environment, and MATLAB, with which plume-tracing algorithms are coded, is applied. In general, a plume-tracing algorithm can be divided into three stages: plume sensing, plume tracking and source localisation for analysis and discussion. In the first part of this research, an assessment of the performance of sixteen widely-used plume-tracing algorithms equipped with a concentration-distance obstacle avoidance method, was undertaken in two different scenarios. In one scenario, a single chemical source is located away from the walls in a wind-tunnel-like channel and in the other scenario, the chemical source is located near a wall. It is found that normal casting, surge anemotaxis and constant stepsize together performed the best, when compared with all the other algorithms. Also, the performance of the concentration-distance obstacle avoidance method is unsatisfactory. By applying an along-wall obstacle avoidance method, an algorithm called vallumtaxis, has been proposed and proved to contribute to higher efficiencies for plume tracing especially when searching in wall plumes. The results and discussion of the first part are presented in Chapter 4 of this thesis. In the second part, ten plume-tracing algorithms were tested and compared in four scenarios in a large-scale indoor environment: an underground warehouse. In these four scenarios, the sources are all on walls while their locations are different. The preliminary testing results of five algorithms show that for most failure cases, the robot failed at source localisation stage. Consequently, with different searching strategies at source localisation stage, this research investigated five further algorithms. The results demonstrated that the algorithm with a specially-designed pseudo casting source localisation method is the best approach to localising hazardous plume sources in the underground warehouse given in this research or other similar environments, among all the tested algorithms. The second part of the study is reported in Chapter 5 of this thesis.Thesis (MPhil) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mechanical Engineering, 202