 |  | | Top: The Segway-like FFR robotic scout for firefighters developed by the Coordinated Robotics Lab at UC San Diego; Above: The FFR robot scout is equipped with stereo cameras that allow the robot to create 3D imaging maps of the temperature and structure |
Engineers in the Coordinated Robotics Lab at the University of California, San Diego, have developed new image processing techniques for rapid exploration and characterisation of structural fires by small self-righting Segway-like robotic vehicles that can climb stairs.A sophisticated on-board software system takes the thermal data recorded by the robot's small infrared camera and maps it onto a three dimensional scene constructed from the images taken by a pair of stereo cameras mounted on the robot. This allows small mobile robotic vehicles to create a virtual reality picture that includes a 3D map and temperature data that can be used immediately by first responders as the robot drives through a building on fire. The research is part of a plan to develop novel robotic scouts that can help firefighters to assist in residential and commercial blazes, making it safer for them to rescue people around collapsing structures and volatile materials.
Researchers will present their results at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation to be held from May 31 to June 5, 2014, in Hong Kong. How it works The robots will map and photograph the interior of burning buildings by using stereo vision. The software system will use the data gathered from various sensors to characterise the state of a fire, including temperatures, volatile gases, and structural integrity while looking for survivors. Working together with other robots both collaboratively and autonomously, a number of such vehicles would quickly develop an accurate augmented virtual reality picture of the building interior. They would then provide it in near real time to rescuers, who could better assess the structure and plan their firefighting and rescue activities to incur minimal losses and save the maximum number of people.
"These robot scouts will be small, inexpensive, agile, and autonomous," said Thomas Bewley, who is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at University of California, San Diego.
"Firefighters arriving at the scene of a fire have 1000 things to do. To be useful, the robotic scouts need to work like well-trained hunting dogs, dispatching quickly and working together to achieve complex goals while making all necessary low-level decisions themselves along the way to get the job done." Bewley's dynamics and control research team has already built the first vehicle prototype, essentially a self-righting Segway-like vehicle that can climb stairs and is equipped with stereo cameras.
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