Robots for Exploration, Digital Preservation and Visualization of Archeological Sites

Monitoring and conservation of archaeological sites are important activities necessary to prevent damage or to perform restoration on cultural heritage. Standard techniques, like mapping and digitizing, are typically used to document the status of such sites. While these task are normally accomplished manually by humans, this is not possible when dealing with hard-to-access areas. For example, due to the possibility of structural collapses, underground tunnels like catacombs are considered highly unstable environments. Moreover, they are full of radioactive gas radon that limits the presence of people only for few minutes. The progress recently made in the artificial intelligence and robotics field opened new possibilities for mobile robots to be used in locations where humans are not allowed to enter. The ROVINA project aims at developing autonomous mobile robots to make faster, cheaper and safer the monitoring of archaeological sites. ROVINA will be evaluated on the catacombs of Priscilla (in Rome) and S. Gennaro (in Naples)

GUARDIANS final report

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for firefghters. The large dimensions together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The Guardians robot swarm is designed to assist fire fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this report we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots searching and assisting fire fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms which provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also one of the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus the robot swarm is able to locate itself and provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the re ghters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm based information to human beings