A Fire Reconnaissance Robot Based on SLAM Position, Thermal Imaging Technologies, and AR Display

Abstract

Due to hot toxic smoke and unknown risks under fire conditions, detection and relevant reconnaissance are significant in avoiding casualties. A fire reconnaissance robot was therefore developed to assist in the problem by offering important fire information to fire fighters. The robot consists of three main systems, a display operating system, video surveillance, and mapping and positioning navigation. Augmented reality (AR) goggle technology with a display operating system was also developed to free fire fighters’ hands, which enables them to focus on rescuing processes and not system operation. Considering smoke disturbance, a thermal imaging video surveillance system was included to extract information from the complicated fire conditions. Meanwhile, a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology was adopted to build the map, together with the help of a mapping and positioning navigation system. This can provide a real-time map under the rapidly changing fire conditions to guide the fire fighters to the fire sources or the trapped occupants. Based on our experiments, it was found that all the tested system components work quite well under the fire conditions, while the video surveillance system produces clear images under dense smoke and a high-temperature environment; SLAM shows a high accuracy with an average error of less than 3.43%; the positioning accuracy error is 0.31 m; and the maximum error for the navigation system is 3.48%. The developed fire reconnaissance robot can provide a practically important platform to improve fire rescue efficiency to reduce the fire casualties of fire fighters.

Design and Analysis of All-Terrain Differential-Driven Caterpillar-Wheeled Based Unmanned Fire Extinguisher Robot

“…Therefore, the concept of the wheeled robot has been used in most of the service robots. The firefighting robot designing and controlling problems are being investigated by several researchers (AlHaza et al, 2015;Khoon et al, 2012;Li et al, 2019;Tsai et al, 2010;Pack et al, 2004;Park et al, 2008;Taha & Marhoon, 2018) because, during fire rescuing operations, many firefighters have lost their lives. Tsai et al (2010) designed the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) algorithm and implemented this algorithm in the FPGA chip to control the motion and direction of an omnidirectional firefighter wheeled robot.…”

Mobile Sentry Robot for Laboratory Safety Inspection Based on Machine Vision and Infrared Thermal Imaging Detection

“…e intelligent fire monitoring feedback control system based on the infrared images for firefighting robots has the great potential Security and Communication Networks [15]. e fire reconnaissance robot developed by Li et al is based on SLAM's location and thermal imaging technology, which can improve the efficiency of fire rescue and reduce fire casualties [16]. SGS, the internationally recognized inspection, identification, testing, and certification agency, recently launched the laboratory Automated Logistics System (BUS) robot "Xiaozhi".…”

Aspects Regarding of a UGV Fire Fighting Thermal Shield

“…The actual state of the research domain represented in the specialized literature [61][62][63][64][65][66], and testing and evaluating the protection system against high temperatures; allows us to analyze an important part of the robot fire intervention.…”

“…From studying the specialty references [61][62][63][64][65][66], the various requirements of the beneficiaries, and the diverse requests of the beneficiaries, of the requirements imposed by the DOR (Documents with Operational Requirements), MND (Mission Needs Documents) operational environment, the following requirements specific for a fire intervention robot have been generated: it should be accessible from the costs point of view; it should operate both from inside and from outside; it should acquire data from the environment; it should be able to communicate from distances as big as possible; it should not be influenced by gamma radiation; it should be able to operate in both a remote control and an autonomous regimen; it should transmit large data quantities; and it should evaluate and map the interior of the buildings so that the data is transited to an operator and the intervention team can know which are the dangers.…”