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In this paper, we propose a new way of doing formation obstacle avoidance using a combination of Constraint Based Programming (CBP) and Rapidly Exploring Random Trees (RRTs). RRT is used to select waypoint nodes, and CBP is used to move the formation between those nodes, reactively rotating and translating the formation to pass the obstacles on the way. Thus, the CBP includes constraints for both...
Highly contaminated puddles were found outside the apparatus hatch in No.3 reactor building in Fukushima Daiichi NPS. These puddles indicated a possibility of cooling water leakage from Primary Containment Vessel (PCV). Therefore, it was necessary to survey whether there was a leakage or not. However surveying was impossible for human because of two main reasons, the narrow access route of 100mm width...
Scenario: A rescue team needs to cross a partially damaged bridge in a flooded area. It is unknown whether the construction is still able to carry a vehicle. Assessing the construction's integrity can be accomplished by the analysis of the bridge's eigenfrequencies. Rather than using proprietary expensive Vibration Measurement Systems (VMS) we propose to utilize off-the-shelf smartphones as sensors...
Realistically simulating a population of robots has been an important subject to the robotics community for the last couple of decades. Multi-robot systems are often challenging to deploy in the real world due to the complexity involved, and researchers often develop and validate coordination mechanisms and collaborative robotic behavior preliminarily in simulations. Thus, choosing a useful, flexible...
The risk of collapse and subsidence of the abandoned lignite mines has been mentioned in Tokai region of Japan. The filling of the cavity is still being advanced. There is no cavity map in the abandoned lignite mines, and it is required to grasp and explore of the underground space in order to estimate the amount of the filling material. By a request from Mitake-cho in Gifu Prefecture, we got the...
Global registration of heterogeneous ground and aerial mapping data is a challenging task. This is especially difficult in disaster response scenarios when we have no prior information on the environment and cannot assume the regular order of man-made environments or meaningful semantic cues. In this work we extensively evaluate different approaches to globally register UGV generated 3D point-cloud...
In search and rescue missions, time is an important factor; fast navigation and quickly acquiring situation awareness might be matters of life and death. Hence, the use of robots in such scenarios has been restricted by the time needed to explore and build a map. One way to speed up exploration and mapping is to reason about unknown parts of the environment using prior information. While previous...
In this paper, we propose a monocular SLAM system for robotic urban search and rescue (USAR), based on which most USAR tasks (e.g. localization, mapping, exploration and object recognition) can be fulfilled by rescue robots with only a single camera. The proposed system can be a promising basis to implement fully autonomous rescue robots. However, the feature-based map built by the monocular SLAM...
Firefighter robot autonomy is important for fire disaster response robotics. SLAM is a key technology for the autonomy. We want to know if SLAM can be used in fire disasters. However, evaluating SLAM in an actual fire disaster is not possible because we cannot generate large fires in actual petrochemical complexes. In this study, we simulated a fire disaster, collected sensor data for different conditions...
In disaster scenarios or search and rescue applications an efficient, constructive and safe mission needs more than just robotic hardware and control. One major element is the interface between operator and robot. In this contribution, we present the approach of VTB-mediated teleoperation. This comprises (i) using standardized interfaces to integrate existing knowledge and libraries of the robotics...
In teleoperation of heavy machines, work efficiency will be 50% lower than manned operation because operators cannot obtain effective information about work sites due to the limitation of current monitoring systems. Operators would have opportunities to obtain such information before work (about a week required to introduce teleoperation systems) and during work. As a fundamental study to support...
This paper presents the development of an interface for small Unmanned Aerial Systems to allow the deployment of ignition spheres at a prescribed fire, real-time fire modeling, and user updates to the automated fire model. Current systems are limited to fire monitoring or modeling, generally rely on a desktop computer, and do not allow updates to the model nor parameter adjustments in the field. The...
In recent natural disasters, robots have played an important role in search and rescue operations in places that are not easily accessible to humans. The key functions of robots in search and rescue operations are mobility in rough terrain, monitoring of surroundings when searching for victims, and creating disaster maps. A robot test field should provide reaction loops between operators, robots,...
A common scenario in Search and Rescue robotics is to map and patrol a disaster site to assess the situation and plan potential missions of rescue teams. Particular importance has to be given to changes in the environment as these may correspond to critical events like building collapses, movement of objects, etc. This paper presents a change detection pipeline for LiDAR-equipped robots to assist...
Although the generation of 3D temperature maps has become a frequently used technique, not only in search and rescue applications but also during inspection tasks, the remote measurement of a surface's true temperature is still a huge challenge. In this work, we face the problem of creating corrected 3D temperature maps in unknown environments without prior knowledge of surface emissivities. Using...
Nowadays, mobile robots are widely used to support fire brigades in search and rescue missions. The utilization of those robots - especially under low visibility conditions due to smoke, fog or dust - is limited. Under these circumstances, environmental perception is still a huge challenge. In this work, we present an approach on using LiDAR, radar and thermal imaging in order to detect hazards that...
For autonomous vehicles, the ability to detect and localize surrounding vehicles is critical. It is fundamental for further processing steps like collision avoidance or path planning. This paper introduces a convolutional neural network- based vehicle detection and localization method using point cloud data acquired by a LIDAR sensor. Acquired point clouds are transformed into bird's eye view elevation...
Recent development in micro-electronics technologies as well as the computer vision techniques increased demand to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in several industrial and civil applications. This paper proposed a vision based system, that is used in UAVs for search, rescue and transportation purposes. The proposed system is divided into two main parts: Vision-based object detection and classification,...
This paper proposes a method for visual pose stabilization of Fotokite, a tethered small unmanned aerial system, using a forward facing monocular camera. Conventionally, Fotokite stabilizes itself only relative to its tether and not relative to the global frame. It is, therefore, susceptible to environmental disturbances (especially wind) or motion of its ground station. Related work proposed visual...
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