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Performing search and rescue tasks in the ruins after disasters demand rescue robots with slender and compliant structure to accommodate the complicated configurations under debris. This paper presents the structural design and system composition of a novel tendon-sheath actuated compliant rescue manipulator with slender and flexible body. The proposed robot can drill into the narrow space where rescuers and traditional rigid robots cannot get in because of size limitation or toxic environment. The self-sensing calibration, dynamic modeling, and hybrid force/position control trajectory of the compliant gripper with integrated position and force monitoring capabilities are analyzed and discussed. With the aim of regulating the gripper displacement and clamping force during operation, a hybrid force/position control strategy is proposed based on a cascaded proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller and a fuzzy sliding mode controller (FSMC). Experimental setups mainly consisting of servo motor, tendon sheath transmission components, compliant gripper, and real-time control system are established to calibrate the strain gauge sensors and identify the dynamic model parameters. Further experimental investigations involving force tracking experiments, position tracking experiments, and object grasping experiments are carried out. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed self-sensing approach and control strategies during rescue operation.

Robots have the potential to save lives in high-risk situations, such as emergency evacuations. To realize this potential, we must understand how factors such as the robot's performance, the riskiness of the situation, and the evacuee's motivation influence his or her decision to follow a robot. In this paper, we developed a set of experiments that tasked individuals with navigating a virtual maze using different methods to simulate an evacuation. Participants chose whether or not to use the robot for guidance in each of two separate navigation rounds. The robot performed poorly in two of the three conditions. The participant's decision to use the robot and self-reported trust in the robot served as dependent measures. A 53% drop in self-reported trust was found when the robot performs poorly. Self-reports of trust were strongly correlated with the decision to use the robot for guidance ( $\phi ({90}) = + 0.745$ ). We conclude that a mistake made by a robot will cause a person to have a significantly lower level of trust in it in later interactions.

Cable-conduit mechanism (CCM) is widely used in robotic hands, rescue robots, rehabilitation robots, and surgical robots because it offers efficient transmission of forces/torques from the external actuator to the end effector with lightweight and high flexibility. However, the accurate position control is challenging in such mechanism due to friction and backlash-like hysteresis between the cable and the conduit. In this paper, a new control approach is proposed to enhance the trajectory tracking performances of the CCM. Unlike current approaches for the CCM in the literature, the proposed scheme considers the position transmission of the CCM as an approximation of backlash-like hysteresis nonlinearities without requiring the exact values of model parameters and their bounds. Online approximation-based robust control laws, which have the capabilities of estimating unknown system parameters, are also established. In addition, the deigned controller can adapt to any changes of the cable-conduit configuration and it is stable. The results of the proposed control techniques have been experimentally validated on a flexible robotic system using a flexible endoscope. Experimental validations show substantial improvements on the performances of position tracking for the use of CCM regardless of the arbitrary changes of the cable-conduit configurations.

In this research, we developed a modular robot by improving our previous rescue robot. The previous robot has many serially connected crawlers to realize high mobility. However, the number of the crawler units was fixed and the operator could not customize the robot for the given task. In this research, we modularized our previous robot to solve this problem. We conducted experiments and demonstrated that the proposed robot canbe applied to various search tasks by changing its formation.Key Words : Robot, Rescue robot, Module, Passive mechanism.

[abstFig src='/00290001/19.jpg' width='300' text='Human-voice enhancement system for a hose-shaped robot' ] This paper presents the design and implementation of a two-stage human-voice enhancement system for a hose-shaped rescue robot. When a microphone-equipped hose-shaped robot is used to search for a victim under a collapsed building, human-voice enhancement is crucial because the sound captured by a microphone array is contaminated by the ego-noise of the robot. For achieving both low latency and high quality, our system combines online and offline human-voice enhancement, providingan overview first and then details on demand. The online enhancement is used for searching for a victim in real time, while the offline one facilitates scrutiny by listening to highly enhanced human voices. Our online enhancement is based on an online robust principal component analysis, and our offline enhancement is based on an independent low-rank matrix analysis. The two enhancement methods are integrated with Robot Operating System (ROS). Experimental results showed that both the online and offline enhancement methods outperformed conventional methods.

Modern public services are nowadays capable of conducting complex operations in case of various natural or man-made hazards. In last decades, the responsibilities of the fire services have been significantly extended from ‘ordinary’ fire-fighting to complex operations including technical rescue, but also chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear rescue. Therefore this crucial public service is being constantly equipped with the newest and the most efficient solutions aiming at optimization of their primary activity, which saves victims lives. Thanks to INSARAG guidelines, activities of certified heavy urban search and rescue groups (HUSAR) are based on solid foundations: knowledge and experience gained during historical events in last decades. However, rapid technological progress might be beneficial. The article describes the MOBNET system, that is currently under development. There was a research work conducted to gather end-user requirements in purpose to create a tailor-made solution supporting traditional activities of USAR teams. The target group of the system has been extended, as other public services might benefit from the system implementation as well. The system will use combined DCT – EGNSS technology to track victims.

An extended nonlinear Kalman filter (EKF) for a real-time estimation of the navigation parameters of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) based on the combination of angular rate sensors, magnetometers, accelerometers and speedometers, pressure sensors or GPS is recently developed. Due to the combination of the measuring devices using the EKF, the accuracy of the navigation parameters is improved because the drifts of angular rate sensors, accelerometers and noise of the measuring devices are ignored. Moreover, this combination helps us to reduce the capacity of the computation in comparison with the inertial navigation methods. We combine the inertial navigation equipments with the speed measurement devices based on an extended Kalman filter in order to improve the speed accuracy of an underwater equipment. The obtained results of the test on the turntable with 3 degrees of freedom Aerosmith and of the firm test on underwaterr rescue robots for big fire have proved the correctness of the algorithm.

The development of sensor, information and communication technology, or new technology, has contributed to the development of robot technology. A new generation of service robots has been developed, and the highest number of their practical applications is for defense and security. Progress and development of information technology, sensor technology and servo-drive is responsible for the development of over 600 different types or prototype service robots. Service robots are designed for professional jobs and service jobs that are used in everyday life. The rapid development of computer management enabled the rapid development of various service robots that can move independently, autonomously exchange information with their surroundings and act completely autonomously (UV Unmanned Vehicles - vehicles that operate autonomously without human management). They can be used in all operating conditions on land, air and water, which is most important for the development of service robots for defense and security. Different applications of service robots for defense and security have been developed, and some are described in the paper, as well as the tendency of their application in the recent years. A large number of service robots for defense and security were developed, which are used for obtaining information about the vulnerability of human populations during earthquakes, fires or military activities. After obtaining information, we can make proper decisions that will serve the purpose of rescue and assistance to the ones in danger. The tendency of application of service robots for security and defense is constantly rising in the past few years. It is estimated that the development of sophisticated service robots for defense, rescue and security will continue in the future, and the number of applications will increase.

A wheel-legged rescue robot design with strong environmental adaptability is proposed. The design presented is aimed at helping rescue workers complete their missions, such as environmental and personnel search, quickly and accurately. So it has broad application prospects. In order to achieve the advantages of simple structure, easy control, small occupation space, and wide motion range, a wheel-legged rescue robot is designed in this paper, and the robot can realize three kinds of motion states, which include wheel state, rotation center lifting process, and leg state. Then the motion states are analyzed in detail, which provides a reference for motion control. Considering the wheel state and leg state share the same structure to contact with the ground, the effect of the stiffness of wheel-legged structure to the motion performance is analyzed. Then the experiment is carried out to prove the feasibility of the structure design. This study offers a design and quantitative analysis for wheel-legged rescue robot. Furthermore, a basis for future control research and engineering applications is established.

The paper presents the operation of a robot through SSH. The robot is a disaster rescue robot and is ROS integrated. Through SSH the robot's CPU is accessed from a robot operating console. Commands are passed from the console to the robot's computing unit through SSH. These commands are used to execute the already existing programs in the robot's processing unit and transmit the results to the operating console through wired or wireless communication. Different programs were executed and their results were presented in this paper. The communication between operating console and robot's CPU is established using a high bandwidth router to avoid the delay in data transmission.

In the case of large-scale accident or disaster such as earthquake, search/rescue robots are required to gather information and save lives in dangerous areas for humans. In our previous studies, the Legged Air Vehicle was designed and built for search operations at a disaster site. It is equipped with four legs and a tandem rotor, and is designed to be operated in various environments by combining flight and walking. In flight, the attitude is controlled by moving the center of gravity by turning the legs in order to reduce the number of actuators. In this paper, a new algorithm of the movement of the center of gravity is suggested, and the attitude controller is redesigned accordingly. Also, the attitude control is installed on the robot and its control performance is validated by flight experiments.

There is a problem associated with various natural and man-made emergencies. The consequences of which can be colossal destruction in densely populated territories. Therefore, USAR teams, which include rescue robots, need to act quickly. However, due to the unpredictability of the situation, rescuers are faced with a number of difficulties due to which expensive equipment can suffer. To prevent the latter and optimize the work of robots, it is necessary to conduct testing in an environment close to reality. For many reasons, this cannot be done in real life, so there is a need to recreate the danger situations in format USAR in a simulation environment, designed to develop algorithms for the interaction of robots with a simulated environment.

Improving the mobile robot’s ability to perceive the physiological parameter of the wounded during search and rescue missions has attracted the attention from re-searchers. This paper proposed a vision-based vital signals measurement, we detect the human body from video images captured by the camera that mounted on a mobile rescue robot, then track the face. Extract heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR) by detecting colour variations of the face skin. We select human posture and face position as experimental variables, the evaluation results show that this method has good consistency with medical monitor, and the overall root mean square error is HR: 1.58, RR: 1.92. This non-contact vital signals detection method will effectively enhance the performance of the mobile robot in search and rescue tasks.

Detecting human presence behind rubbles can play a major role in rescue operation. However, seeing through opaque material is very challenging. In this paper, we have demonstrated such a see-through sensor using Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio signals using the ‘ranging’ technique. The theory behind this work is based on finding the complex permittivity of the obstructing material at least two different frequencies using UWB radio waves. Once the permittivity values of the material are found, slope of the permittivity curve can be estimated and a sensor can be deigned to ‘ignore/see through’ the obstruction by estimating the speed of the UWB signal through it. We have experimentally verified this using an UWB transceiver equipped rescue robot that was able to detect human presence behind wood and dry-wall.

Typical tasks of service robotics and special robotics fields, including Urban Search and Rescue, set a number of challenges for mobile robotics with automatic performance of various functions of mobile robots being a key task. To pursue automatic camera calibration processes using on-body markers in this paper we demonstrated results of validation experiments on mobile robot Servosila Engineer using fiducial markers, which we selected based on the results of virtual experiments with fiducial marker systems.

Flippers are essential components of tracked robot locomotion systems for unstructured terrain, especially within a rescue scenario. Achieving full and semi-autonomy for such rescue robots is the goal of many research efforts. In this work, we propose an algorithm to plan the morphologies of a small rescue robot with four flippers to get over 3D ground without any extra sensors, such as pressure sensors. To achieve the goal, we simplify the rescue robot as a skeleton on inflated terrain. Its morphology can be represented by configurations of several parameters. Then we plan the mobile robot's movement on 3D terrain with four individually manipulated flippers. We perform real robot experiments on three different obstacles. The results show that we move the flippers very effectively and are thus able to tackle those terrains very well.

The deployment of mobile robots in urban search and rescue (USAR) scenarios often requires manipulation abilities, for example, for clearing debris or opening a door. Conventional teleoperated control of mobile manipulator arms with a high number of degrees of freedom in unknown and unstructured environments is highly challenging and error-prone. Thus, flexible semi-autonomous manipulation capabilities promise valuable support to the operator and possibly also prevent failures during missions. However, most existing approaches are not flexible enough as, e.g., they either assume a-priori known objects or object classes or require manual selection of grasp poses. In this paper, an approach is presented that combines a segmented 3D model of the scene with grasp pose detection. It enables grasping arbitrary rigid objects based on a geometric segmentation approach that divides the scene into objects. Antipodal grasp candidates sampled by the grasp pose detection are ranked to ensure a robust grasp. The human remotely operating the robot is able to control the grasping process using two short interactions in the user interface. Our real robot experiments demonstrate the capability to grasp various objects in cluttered environments.

Maximizing the utility of human-robot teams in disaster response and search and rescue (SAR) missions remains to be a challenging problem. This is mainly due to the dynamic, uncertain nature of the environment and the variability in cognitive performance of the human operators. By having an autonomous agent share control with the operator, we can achieve near-optimal performance by augmenting the operator's input and compensate for the factors resulting in degraded performance. What this solution does not consider though is the latency in human input and errors caused by potential hardware failures that can occur during task completion with safety, security and rescue robots. In this paper, we propose the use of blended shared control (BSC) architecture to address these issues and investigate the architecture's performance in constrained, dynamic environments with a differential drive robot that has input latency and drift caused by erroneous odometry feedback. We conduct a validation study (n=12) for our control architecture and then a user study (n=14) in 2 different environments that are unknown to both the human operator and the autonomous agent. The results demonstrate that the BSC architecture prevents collisions and enhance team performance without the need of a complete transfer of control between the human operator and autonomous agent.

For deployment in previously unknown, unstructured and GPS-denied environments, autonomous mobile rescue robots need to localize themselves in the environment and create a map of it using a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) approach. While most existing lidar-based methods use occupancy grids to represent a map, the use of truncated signed distance functions (TSDFs) is investigated in this paper to improve accuracy and robustness. In contrast to occupancy grids, TSDFs represent the distance to the nearest surface in every grid cell. This enables sub-pixel precision during localization and increases the basin of convergence of scan matching. To enable consistent mapping of large spaces, an efficient branch-and-bound based loop closure detection is applied. The evaluation of the proposed approach with publicly available benchmark data shows that the proposed approach yields improved accuracy in comparison to occupancy grid based methods, while requiring similar runtime. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to map a large scale environment with urban search and rescue elements in real-time.

Rescue robots are expected to perform works in hazardous areas. However, when the robot runs on a rough terrain, fatal rollover falling sometimes occurs. Therefore, we propose a tumble-risk-assessment system, which calculates a normalized energy stability margin by using a 3D depth sensor. Moreover, a control system to avoid the tumble situation by moving the sub-crawlers automatically is proposed. We implemented the proposed systems to a real robot, carried out experiments, and confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The paper introduces a novel modular and adaptable payload concept for plugging in sensor and actuator platforms such as 3D LIDAR and visual sensor systems and robot manipulator and gripper systems. Integration, programming and operation of heterogeneous robot systems (such as mobile manipulators or robots in a machine network) are very complex tasks for plant operators. Heterogeneous system components have to be orchestrated (via proprietary interfaces) by higher-level control systems. Robot programs are created offline, in proprietary tools, and used through macros. System components are generally not compatible and interchangeable across manufacturers. These have to be programmed separately in manufacturer-specific tools. Cross-component debugging is difficult. The operation of complex systems is difficult, requires intensive training, and is currently limited to simple graphical user interfaces (GUI). As part of process optimization, it is usually necessary to optimize process points during the start-up phase. This requires highly skilled personnel capable of robot programming at the plant operators site. The combination of heterogeneous robot modules results in many new hazardous situations. It is therefore necessary to include an appropriate safety concept. The goal is to design a robot payload concept with a plug-and-play approach to be used as a modular and flexible unit. This shall reduce the effort for system integration and sensor calibrating significantly and provide a customized perception of the environment during certain work processes. The modular, autonomous and adaptable robot concept with several sensors and hardware components was implemented as a prototype on a rescue robot. The modules have already been integrated on other autonomous vehicles for exploration and dexterity tasks.

This paper analyzes the current status of communication control of emergency rescue robots in detail, points out the shortcomings of traditional wireless communication support methods for emergency rescue robots, proposes a mechanism for separating data channels and control signaling, and uses two-way wireless RF links to transmit video data and the robot control command, establishes a two-way radio frequency communication control method, solves the key problem that the emergency rescue robot group communication is not real-time and the control efficiency is low, and ensures the accuracy of the robot operation.

The occurrence of natural calamities leading to the missing of human is a prominent barrier for effective rescue operations. The history of rescue operations in recent years has reported the lack of effective scheme for identification of people in danger. This paper deals with the development of an Arduino based rescue robot for detection of people trapped in land or water areas affected by natural calamities serving the additional purpose of transporting emergency food and medical aids to the people. The proposed system incorporates PIR sensors, Ultrasonic sensors to detect the presence of living beings. Also a Gas sensor is incorporated to detect the presence of poisonous gases in the area to aid the rescue operations. A moving mechanism equipped with a float sensor is integrated to make the robot capable of translation of its travel from land to water. A control system for movement of robot in all directions by android application is integrated into the system and a live streaming facility is included for assessing the status of the living being to be rescued. The designed system offers additional aid in the assessment of the presence and status of living bodies in an effective manner with reduced effort by using android application.

Technological world demands the use of automation and robots for challenging and dangerous tasks associated with disaster management and rescue operations. A reliable and applicable technical solution that can be adapted in uncertain environments with high constraints is indispensable for rescue operations. This research study focuses on design and development of low cost mobile robot with various task operations that are adaptable for unknown terrain and environmental conditions. A mobile robot is designed and developed with a gripper and a driller for diverse application during rescue operations. The designed system has the ability to lift a maximum weight of 2 kg with the provided power supply and drill different materials. The performance of developed gripper and driller is reliable with an accuracy of 100%. The robot is controlled using a remote which allows adaptive nature based on environment. The research is concluded with future potential applications on the developed mobile robotic platform for rescue operations. The developed mobile robot is cost effective with practical technology which can be replicated on similar robots and thus can be used in diverse applications including swarm robotics and education studies.

Various robots that operate in dangerous environments have been developed. A robot falling down is a critical incident, and many studies have been conducted to avoid the rollover situation. However, in a disaster site, the robot may rollover even if previous control methods are implemented. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a control method to recover from the rollover situation. The objective of this study is to realize autonomous control for the rollover recovery of a rescue robot. Initially, subcrawlers are controlled to reduce the normalized energy stability margin. Subsequently, if the robot cannot recover by using the subcrawlers, a manipulator is used to push the ground, rotate the robot, and then recover from the rollover situation. The experiment was performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method using the Gazebo simulator where a dynamics engine, named the Open Dynamics Engine, was installed.

We conducted a preliminary study aiming at manipulator autonomously searching for victims in disaster environment. Manipulators need functions such as opening doors, valves, moving debris. Generally, it is necessary for a manipulator to identify these objects using a camera. However, in disaster environments, manipulators equipped with cameras are often unstable. Therefore, we experimented whether objects can be recognized by moving camera. In order to confirm the difference between the fixed camera and the moving camera, we aimed to identify images using an CNN that was as simple as possible, and employed object recognition via image thresholding. We focused on objects related to the door, and experimented on hazard marks and door knobs. If the rescue robot could recognize a hazard mark before entering the room, secondary damage would be prevented. Different door knobs must be turned in different ways. Therefore, in a disaster environment, the rescue robot must identify the type of door knob. The experiment distinguished between various door knobs and the finger pulls needed to open a Japanese Husuma (a type of sliding door). We created a manipulator that can be mounted on a rescue robot to conduct this experiment. This manipulator is equipped with a control system using inverse kinematics. Using this control system, the operator can indicate the target coordinates of the end-effector. In addition, the operator can know the posture of the manipulator in real time, as revealed by simulation.

It is a huge burden on an operator when he/she tele-operates a rescue robot traveling on a rough terrain. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to reduce this burden by controlling the robot autonomously. As a first step, we propose a step climbing method for a crawler type rescue robot by using reinforcement learning with Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). The input data are the image of a camera on the robot and a posture image of the robot. We verified the effectiveness of the proposed method using a dynamics simulator.

In nature, there are many disasters that may threaten the safety of human life, such as house collapse caused by earthquakes, fires, etc. The danger and complexity of the rescue environment often bring great difficulties to the search and rescue work. In the harsh rescue environment, there are often many secondary disasters, such as aftershocks after the earthquake and the second collapse of the house. The emergence of rescue robots has greatly reduced the risk of people being hurt during the rescue process, and improved the efficiency of rescue work. Based on the development status of rescue robots, this paper briefly introduces the Robocup Rescue competition and the hardware and software components of rescue robots. At the same time, it briefly analyzes the SLAM technology and its algorithms of rescue robots, and finally states the future development of rescue robots.

Rescue robots play an important role in the disaster, which are often used to search trapped people with the help of image technology. However, image-based robots have some limitations such as high energy consumption. To address this issue, this paper introduces a rescue system combining WiFi sensing and image recognition with two intelligent robots, which is called RSWI. This rescue system consists of two module: WiFi-based module and image-based module. WiFi-based module can fast detect the trapped people based on channel state information with a low energy consumption. Once the WiFi-based module detects someone in target area, image-based module will open immediately and execute the visibility calculation method which can determine whether the current environment is suitable for using image recognition technology. If the environment permits, this system will use image recognition technology based on Faster R-CNN to confirm someone existing information. Finally, we evaluate our design in indoor and outdoor environment. The results show that this rescue system is characterized by low energy consumption, reduction of false alarm rate, and adaptation to many scenes.

For rescue robots, flippers endow the robot with additional ability to pass through various terrain. Also, autonomous capabilities become more important, especially with respect to autonomous motion including flippers. In recent work, autonomy for flippers is done by either planning with several special states or based on collected data. We are considering if it is possible to find a way to build continuous states without collecting old trail data. In this paper, we first model the possible states as a global planning path with parameter configuration of the scene. Then, we follow the path to achieve the autonomous run. We plot the morphology of each path points to show the correctness of the path and implement a simple path following on real robot to demonstrate the performance of our algorithm.

Numerous loss of lives is seen each year and the sum is consistently expanding because of destruction, fiasco, cataclysm and so forth these incorporate natural and man-made fiascoes. To counter this we have structured a rescue robot that is autonomous, it pursues track way by dint of 3 ultrasonic sensors in the front. For the processing work Raspberry Pi Model B is utilized which incorporates a grouping of single board processors. The smaller card size is handful as we are utilizing 4wd Car Chassis and a motor controller to drive it through. The robot features computer vision and raspberry pi camera module is used to help with the vision. We trained the camera utilizing algorithm to empower it identify movement, consequently after detecting movement the robot utilizes PIR to detect and affirm human presence. When human life is recognized in a destructed place the web application helps us to observe the live streaming of that found human and the closest environment. The coordination of GPS Module gives us a chance to see the area of where rescue activity is occurring. The web application that is designed by us likewise gives us a chance to do as such. After rescuing the detected individual, it goes on its merry way in repeating the flow of work that is assigned to it helping achieve maximum amount of success and lives saved. The reality to stun is, all these are incorporated in a solitary car chassis and the expense behind the work is insignificant. The reason is utilizing raspberry pi and our work to make a pi camera module ready to recognize movement by help of raspberry pi while incredible and expensive processors are required by and large.

Using camera sensors for ground robot Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has many benefits over laser-based approaches, such as the low cost and higher robustness. RGBD sensors promise the best of both worlds: dense data from cameras with depth information. This paper proposes to fuse RGBD and IMU data for a visual SLAM system, called VINS-RGBD, that is built upon the open source VINS-Mono software. The paper analyses the VINS approach and highlights the observability problems. Then, we extend the VINS-Mono system to make use of the depth data during the initialization process as well as during the VIO (Visual Inertial Odometry) phase. Furthermore, we integrate a mapping system based on subsampled depth data and octree filtering to achieve real-time mapping, including loop closing. We provide the software as well as datasets for evaluation. Our extensive experiments are performed with hand-held, wheeled and tracked robots in different environments. We show that ORB-SLAM2 fails for our application and see that our VINS-RGBD approach is superior to VINS-Mono.

A long history of first place awards in World RoboCup Rescue Robot competitions is Invigorating Robot Activity Project (iRAP) such as iRAP_PRO, iRAP_FURIOUS, iRAP_JUNIOR, and iRAP_ROBOT. In this paper, we would like to introduce and explain an autonomous system of our rescue robots for detection and recognition of hazardous material (Hazmat) marking charts. All Hazmat tags are considered and computed by using speeded-up robust feature combined with fast library for approximate nearest neighbors to match with the templates. Finally, the paper presents experimental results based on real situations to confirm an effect of the pattern recognition of robotics.