RFID Technology-based Exploration and SLAM for Search And Rescue

Abstract

Abstract-Robot search and rescue is a time critical task, i.e. a large terrain has to be explored by multiple robots within a short amount of time. The efficiency of exploration depends mainly on the coordination between the robots and hence on the reliability of communication, which considerably suffers under the hostile conditions encountered after a disaster. Furthermore, rescue robots have to generate a map of the environment which has to be sufficiently accurate for reporting the locations of victims to human task forces. Basically, the robots have to solve autonomously in real-time the problem of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). This paper proposes a novel method for real-time exploration and SLAM based on RFID tags that are autonomously distributed in the environment. We utilized the algorithm of Lu and Milios [8] for calculating globally consistent maps from detected RFID tags. Furthermore we show how RFID tags can be used for coordinating the exploration of multiple robots.Results from experiments conducted in the simulation and on a robot show that our approach allows the computationally efficient construction of a map within harsh environments, and coordinated exploration of a team of robots.

HybridExploration: A distributed approach to terrain exploration using mobile and fixed sensor nodes

“…The feasibility of the approach is supported by Hähnel et al [11], who proved how a robot can use RFID tags already placed on an area to localize itself and navigate through the rooms, and recently by Kleiner et al [10], who presented a robot which is able to autonomously drop RFID tags on the environment and implement an existing on-line exploration algorithm [12].…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, little work [9], [2], [10], [3] has investigated the problem of on-line area exploration by letting agents coordinate indirectly by tagging the environment, subsequently reading and updating the state of the deployed tags. Moreover, existing algorithms are not able to autonomously decide when the exploration is terminated.…”

Context-based design of robotic systems

“…These modules implement a policy which is similar to the one sketched in [22], where RFIDs are released in locations where the robot is likely to return, and, thus, which are likely to be useful for closing loops (see Figure 6, Contextual Rules).…”

“…It has already been shown [22] that it is possible to equip robots with RFID-deployment devices and that such devices can be effectively used to correct noisy odometry. Building the entire system is out of the scope of this paper.…”

Real‐time localization and elevation mapping within urban search and rescue scenarios

“…Furthermore, they can be utilized for a communication-free coordination of these robots ͑Kleiner, Prediger & Nebel, 2006;Ziparo et al, 2007͒. Second, RFID tags that have been put into the environment can be used in a straightforward manner by humans to follow routes towards victim locations, i.e., they do not need to localize themselves within a metric map.…”