Kickoff meeting: Tuesday, October 8, 2024, 13.00 h, room P 1.6.02.1

Short description

Working on highly topical problems in the field of autonomous rescue robots. By working on small assignments in teams, students will become familiar with typical engineering tasks / procedures.

Contents

After severe accidents rescue personnel is often unable to get to the actual location because the path is obstructed by debris or fire or can simply not be reached due to extreme heat caused by fires. In those situations mobile robots can be an effective resource. In addition to developing a robust systems, intelligent functions in these systems is one of the fundamental challenges of this field of research.

Independently developing maps of the site is just one task since previously existing maps may be useless after e. g. an earthquake. Without a map the robot would not be able to systematically search the area nor could it inform human rescue workers of the exact location of the detected victims. The initially vision-supported detection of victims is achieved by cameras. But acoustic signals, an elevated carbon dioxide concentration and regions of body heat registered by thermal imaging cameras may also point to live victims.

In addition to autonomous performance, a robot should in emergency situations also master tele-operated behavior to be able to communicate with rescue workers and provide them with an overview of the situation in the disaster area. In this case, it might be required to transmit the coordinates of a buried victim or accept new orders. At any given time, a robot has to able to detect whether or not it is still in touch with the operations center or if it has to act completely autonomous. Establishing cooperative teams of robot systems and human operators is a long-term objective.