Abstract
Humanitarian Crisis scenarios typically require immediate rescue intervention. In many cases, the conditions at a scene may be prohibitive for human rescuers to provide instant aid, because of hazardous, unexpected, and human threatening situations. These scenarios are ideal for autonomous mobile robot systems to assist in searching and even rescuing individuals. In this study, we present a synchronous ground-aerial robot collaboration approach, under which an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and a humanoid robot solve a Search and Rescue scenario locally, without the aid of a commonly used Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Specifically, the UAV uses a combination of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping and OctoMap approaches to extract a 2.5D occupancy grid map of the unknown area in relation to the humanoid robot. The humanoid robot receives a goal position in the created map and executes a path planning algorithm in order to estimate the FootStep navigation trajectory for reaching the goal. As the humanoid robot navigates, it localizes itself in the map while using an adaptive Monte-Carlo Localization algorithm by combining local odometry data with sensor observations from the UAV. Finally, the humanoid robot performs visual human body detection while using camera data through a Darknet pre-trained neural network. The proposed robot collaboration scheme has been tested under a proof of concept setting in an exterior GNSS-denied environment.
Highlights
Humanitarian Crisis scenarios occur frequently and they typically require immediate rescue intervention
This study describes a ground-aerial robot collaboration approach, in which a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and humanoid robot cooperate to solve a real-world Search and Rescue scenario
Assuming that the humanoid robot cannot take any range measurements to localize itself in the world, we use the UAV to perform both the environment mapping and humanoid robot localization
Summary
Humanitarian Crisis scenarios occur frequently and they typically require immediate rescue intervention. Many organizations and research teams are developing rescuing robots in order to assist "human" Search and Rescue (SAR) teams These mobile robots can be equipped with a variety of sensors, actuators, and embedded processing units, depending on the scenario that they operate on. Since this is one of the few implemented multi-robot studies, we address the wide range of problem-solving potential through the collaboration of ground and aerial robots under varying limitations on environments, sensors, and specifications.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have