Fig 2 - uploaded by Claude Sammut
Content may be subject to copyright.
the autonomous High speed Obstacle Mapping and Exploration Robot (an earlier version using stereo vision instead of laser).
Source publication
This document describes the "CASualty" entry into the 2006 Ro-boCup Rescue competition. The entry consists of two primary vehicles, the tracked articulated rescue vehicle CASTER, and the wheeled differential drive robot HOMER. The vehicles are equipped with a range of state of the art sen-sors for mapping, localization and victim identification, an...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... robot team consists of two primary vehicles, CASTER: a Yujin RobHaz DT-3 articulated tracked vehicle (see figure 1), and the custom built HOMER (High-speed Obstacle Mapping and Exploration Robot, see figure 2). CASTER will be tele- operated and is primarily intended for the more difficult Orange and Red arenas, while HOMER will be run autonomously in the Yellow arena. ...
Similar publications
Search and Rescue scenarios offer a wide variety of tasks where the experimentation of robots is possible. In particular, we address some of the issues arising from scenarios where full autonomy of the robot is required. In this paper after briefly describing our robot configuration and the experimental scenario, we address three main components of...
Recent industrial developments in autonomous systems, or agents, which assume that humans and the agents share the same space or even work in close proximity, open for new challenges in robotics, especially in motion planning and control. In these settings, the control system should be able to provide these agents a reliable path following control...
Citations
... However, differently from our approach, in Frintrop et al. (2004) the saliency values are only used in a local saliency map and are not integrated into a global saliency map, thus the overall exploration strategy is different. A vision-based exploration is used by the CASualty team (Kadous et al. 2005) (third award, Robocup 2005) with HOMER (second, autonomy challenge Robocup 2006). Here, the stereo vision is used to detect selected features and build feature maps which are then incorporated in the SLAM. ...
In this paper we present a control architecture for an autonomous rescue robot specialized in victim finding in an unknown
and unstructured environment. The reference domain for rescue robots is the rescue-world arenas purposefully arranged for
the Robocup competitions. The main task of a rescue mobile robot is to explore the environment and report to the rescue-operators
the map of visited areas annotated with its finding. In this context all the attentional activities play a major role in decision
processes: salient elements in the environment yield utilities and objectives. A model-based executive controller is proposed
to coordinate, integrate, and monitor the distributed decisions and initiatives emerging from the modules involved in the
control loop. We show how this architecture integrates the reactive model-based control of a rescue mission, with an attentive
perceptual activity processing the sensor and visual stimuli. The architecture has been implemented and tested in real-world
experiments by comparing the performances of metric exploration and attentive exploration. The results obtained demonstrate
that the attentive behavior significantly focus the exploration time in salient areas enhancing the overall victim finding
effectiveness.
... As mentioned above about the criteria, a lot of improved features need to be added to CEO Mission IV to solve the problems in the previous versions of CEO Mission robot series [5][6] [7] and other robots such as RobHaz, Casualty, IUB [9] [10][11] [12] for having the better victim accessibility, reliability and mobility. Our main design purpose is not only for the World RoboCup Rescue Robot League 2007, but also including the modular concept, the concepts for reproduction and ease to maintenance and finally, developing it to be the universal robotic platform for real practical usages. ...
The paper describes the CEO Mission IV rescue robot design and implementation. Its features are designed especially for World RoboCup Championship Rescue Robot League 2007 and USAR field. It is also designed for real practical usages as the universal robotic platform. CEO Mission IV is one of the CEO Mission rescue robot series from University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC), which is engaged in USAR research area since 2004. Not only intended for surveillance in rescue job, but CEO Mission IV is also designed with the modular concept and the concepts for reproduction and ease to maintenance. CEO Mission IV rescue robot is composed of the 6-Joint mechanical arm installed on the robotic platform, which is a track wheel type with double front flippers for climbing up the stairs and rough terrain. Three cameras, laser pointer and sensors like IR temperature sensor, CO2 sensor, and voice sensor are installed on the tip of the 6-Joint mechanical arm for searching the vital signs of victims in the debris. The forth camera is at the back of the robot for driving control. The robot wheels encoders, yawn/pitch/roll angle sensors, and laser range finder are installed at robot for plotting the 2D obstacle map and robot traveling map. Robot localization and map plotting is implemented by using SLAM and Kalman filter. All sensors and controlling data including audio and video data are communicated with a teleoperator control station via IEEE 802.11a/g WiFi for getting real-time response. The communication frequency can be selected as 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz at the teleoperator suitcase instantly in order to avoid signal disturbance. At teleoperator station, the robot locomotion and the mechanical arm are controlled by joystick via the user-friendly GUI control and monitoring program which is developed based on the clicking and dragging method to easily control the movement of the arm. Moreover, a portable teleoperator suitcase is built for operator convenience and portability. All hardware and software systems are explained. The concept and design of this robot can be adapted to suit many other applications. Testing results are very satisfied. CEO Mission IV is one of the most effective rescue robot systems and won the Third Place from World RoboCup Championship 2007.
... The common solution to this problem is to use additional tracks that can change their posture relative to the main robot body. Examples of variable configuration robots are shown in figure 2. They are successful in many application domains related to rescue robotics [16][17] [18] including the RoboCup rescue league [19][20][21] [22][23][24]. ...
Tracked mobile robots with adjustable support tracks or flippers are popular promising solutions for negotiating rough terrain
and 3D obstacles. Though many according robot bases are in principle physically capable of climbing stairs, it is a non-trivial
control-task for a remote tele-operator, especially when the user can not directly see the robot like in search and rescue
scenarios. To limit training requirements and to ease the cognitive load on operators, respectively to enable fully autonomous
rescue robots, we developed a fuzzy controller for this task, which adjusts the drive forces and the posture of the flipper.
The design of the controller is guided by observing the strategies of a trained user when tele-operating a robot with unlimited
visual information. In doing so, an Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) simulation of our robot is used where the full set of all physical
parameters is accessible for analysis. Based on this data, it is shown in several experiments that the controller is not only
capable of climbing stairs but that it does so in a more efficient manner than the human user who served as training model.
... They are very agile and fast in unstructured environments and they also perform well on open terrain. This holds for tracked vehicles in general [23][24], which can also be seen by their popularity in the RoboCup rescue league, for example in the robots of Team Freiburg, Robhaz, Casualty or IRL [25] [26] [27] [28]. A special feature of rugbot is an active flipper mechanism (figure 2) that allows to negotiate rubble piles and stairs (figure 4). ...
The paper describes the IUB Rugbot, a rugged mobile robot that features quite some on-board intelligence. The robot and its software is the latest development of the IUB rescue robot team, which is active since 2001 in this research area. IUB robotics takes an integrated approach to rescue robots. This means that the development of the according systems ranges from the basic mechatronics to the high-level functionalities for intelligent behavior.
... It is quite active and fast in unstructured environments and it also performs well on uneven terrain. Tracked wheels are very popular in the RoboCup rescue league, for example in the robots of Team Freiburg, Robhaz, Casualty, IRL and IUB12345. The track wheel robots which mentioned above are variety designs. ...
This paper presents IXNAMIKI, the first prototype of rescue robot developed at the MCS Mobile Robotics Group to compete at Robocup 2010. IXNAMIKI consists of a track wheel type structure. With double front flippers, it is capable of moving, climbing and collapsing rough terrain. IXNAMIKI also encompasses a 6-joint mechanical arm which can be deployed not only for sur-veillance from the top view but also for easier and faster access to the victims. A video camera and a set of sensors are set up at the tip of the mechanical arm to aid the operator during rescue decision making. The mapping techniques in-cluded in this prototype take advantage of a 2D real-time laser scanning.
There is no ideal footprint for a rescue robot. In some situations, for example when climbing up a rubble pile or stairs,
the footprint has to be large to maximize traction and to prevent tilting over. In other situations, for example when negotiating
narrow passages or doorways, the footprint has to be small to prevent to get stuck. The common approach is to use flippers,
i.e., additional support tracks that can change their posture relative to the main locomotion tracks. Here a novel mechatronic
design for flippers is presented that overcomes a significant drawback in the state of the art approaches, namely the large
forces in the joint between main locomotion tracks and flippers. Instead of directly driving this joint to change the posture,
a link mechanism driven by a ballscrew is used. In this paper, a formal analysis of the new mechanism is presented including
a comparison to the state of the art. Furthermore, a concrete implementation and results from practical experiments that support
the formal analysis are presented.
