The RoboCup-Rescue project: a robotic approach to the disaster mitigation problem

Abstract

This paper introduces the RoboCup-Rescue Simulation Project, a contribution to the disaster mitigation, search and rescue problem. A comprehensive urban disaster simulator is constructed on distributed computers. Heterogeneous intelligent agents such as fire fighters, victims and volunteers conduct search and rescue activities in this virtual disaster world. A real world interface integrates various sensor systems and controllers of infrastructures in the real cities with the virtual world. Real-time simulation is synchronized with actual disasters, computing complex relationship between various damage factors and agent behaviors. A mission-critical man-mnchine interface provides portability and robustness of disaster mitigation centers, and augmented-reality interfaces f o r rescue parties an real disasters. It also provides a virtualreality training function for the Public. This diverse spectrum of RoboCup-Rescue cont:-ihtes to the creation of the safer social system.

A Fuzzy Approach for Risk Analysis with Application in Project Management

“…The basic idea behind the potential field method is to define an artificial potential field (energy) in the robot's workspace in which the robot is attracted to its goal position and is repulsed away from the obstacles (Alsultan & Aliyu, 1996;Khanmohammadi & Soltani, 2011). Despite the problems in architecture of potential field such as local minima and oscillation in narrow passages, this method is particularly attractive because of its mathematical elegance and simplicity (Casper & Yanco, 2002;Chadwick, 2005;Tadokoro et al, 2000). For simplicity, we assume that the robot is of point mass and moves in a twodimensional (2-D) workspace.…”

Design and evaluation of multi agent systems for rescue operations

“…The RoboCup-Rescue [11] simulator is a distributed framework made up by of a chain of simulators that operate on a virtual scenario, and interact each other through a set of services made available by a communication core: the kernel. Moreover such a module merges the world changes made by the simulators in a global world representation, and defines a network interface for the agents to operate.…”

“…In the recent past significant research initiatives have been undertaken in Japan [11], in the USA [7], and also in Italy [9], that specifically focus on the problem of developing software tools to support the management of this kind of emergency and, more specifically, to design a support system for search and rescue operations in largescale disasters. These tools are intended both for online support during the actual operations as well as for previsional analysis and training.…”

“…The RoboCup-Rescue simulator [11] considers simultaneously three activities: (1) modeling of events related, in a direct way or not, to the disaster; (2) acquiring and integrating data coming from different heterogeneous sources; (3) modeling/monitoring/planning the resources used in the intervention. These activities offer an environment for experimentation, which provides significant advancements compared to the existing applications related to this field.…”

Progress in RoboCup Soccer Research in 2000

“…Details are described in papers and a book [7,8,9,10,11,14]. The simulator prototype can be downloaded from the links at http://robomec.cs.kobe-u.ac.jp/robocup-rescue/.…”