Development of a search and rescue robot system for the underground building environment

Abstract

The underground building environment plays an increasingly important role in the construction of modern cities. To deal with possible fires, collapses, and so on, in underground building space, it is a general trend to use rescue robots to replace humans. This paper proposes a dual-robot system solution for search and rescue in an underground building environment. To speed up rescue and search, the two robots focus on different tasks. However, the environmental perception information and location of them are shared. The primary robot is used to quickly explore the environment in a wide range, identify objects, cross difficult obstacles, and so on.The secondary robot is responsible for grabbing, carrying items, clearing obstacles, and so on. In response to the difficulty of rescue caused by unknown scenes, the Lidar, inertial measurement unit and multiview cameras are integrated for large-scale 3D environment mapping. The depth camera detects the objects to be rescued and locate them on the map. A six-degree-of-freedom manipulator with a two-finger gripper is equipped to open doors and clear roadblocks during the rescue. To solve the problem of severe signal attenuation caused by reinforced concrete walls, corners and long-distance transmission, a wireless multinode networking solution is adopted. In the case of a weak wireless signal, the primary robot uses autonomous exploration for environmental perception. Experimental results show the robots' system has high reliability in over-the-horizon maneuvering, teleoperation of the door opening and grasping, object searching, and environmental perception, and can be well applied to underground search and rescue.

Towards an obstacle detection system for robot obstacle negotiation

“…Mobile robots equipped for obstacle negotiation are commonly used in applications such as rescue and disaster relief (Wang et al, 2023;Bai et al, 2023aBai et al, , 2023b, scientific exploration (Zhu et al, 2021) and military operations due to their robust environmental adaptability (Bai et al, 2023a(Bai et al, , 2023b. Obstacle negotiation is the premise for robots to overcome obstacles (Zhu et al, 2021), and the methods for mobile robots to achieve autonomous obstacle negotiation can be divided into two categories: environment-based motion planning obstacle negotiation method (Li et al, 2016) and information-based online control obstacle negotiation method (Vincent and Sun, 2012;Sokolov et al, 2017).…”

Effectiveness evaluation of complex electromechanical system based on improved analytic hierarchy process - entropy weight method - fuzzy synthesis evaluation method

“…Taking the coal mine disaster rescue system as an example, this paper constructs an indicator evaluation system for the coal mine disaster rescue system [4][5][6][7][8][9], and the effectiveness indicators of the rescue system are mainly survivability, action ability, operation ability, etc. The weights of each indicator in the indicator evaluation system are calculated by the improved analytic hierarchy process, and then the entropy weight method is used to modify the indicator weight.…”

Earthwork digital twin for teleoperation of an automated bulldozer in edge dumping

“…Extreme and hazardous construction sites bring challenges to workers' safety. Teleoperation can remotely control machinery or robot, which is a promising way to avoid construction hazards and has broad application prospects in mine drainage, water conservancy engineering, nuclear waste treatment, and other working conditions (Lee et al, 2022; Okishiba et al, 2019; Wang et al, 2023). With the support of the digital twin (DT) system, teleoperation can accurately perceive the environment in real‐time for earthwork construction.…”