Technology has become the solution to many long-standing problems, and while current technologies may be effective, it is far from fully addressing the hug, complex, difficult and challenging tasks ...associated with disaster missions and risky intervention. The challenge is in finding creative, reliable and applicable technical solutions in such highly constrained and uncertain environment. In addition, it is necessary to overcome constrains on resources by developing innovative, cost effective and practical technology. Robotics can play important intelligent and technological roles that support first response equipment in harsh and dangerous environments while replacing rescue personnel from entering unreachable or unsafe places. Robotics solutions that are well adapted to local conditions of unstructured and unknown environment can greatly improve safety and security of personnel as well as work efficiency, productivity and flexibility. Solving and fulfilling the needs of such tasks presents challenges in robotic mechanical structure and mobility, sensors and sensor fusion, autonomous and semi autonomous control, planning and navigation, and machine intelligence. This paper categorizes the source of disasters and associated missions, and highlights the needs for suitable and reliable technology and technical and functional requirements of robotic systems to fulfill task objectives. In addition, it shows that robotic technologies can be used for disasters prevention or early warning, intervention and recovery efforts during disasters with all possible kinds of relevant missions while ensuring quality of service and safety of human beings. Some of these missions may include: demining, search and rescue, surveillance, reconnaissance and risk assessment, evacuation assistance, intrusion/victim detection and assessment, etc.
During the Humanitarian-demining actions, teleoperation of sensors or multi-sensor heads can enhance-detection process by allowing more precise scanning, which is use-ful for the optimization of the ...signal processing algorithms. This chapter summarizes the technologies and experiences developed during 16 years through national and/or European-funded projects, illustrated by some contributions of our own laboratory, located at the Royal Military Academy of Brussels, focusing on the detection of unex-ploded devices and the implementation of mobile robotics systems on minefields.
In this paper, we present a control architecture for an intelligent outdoor mobile robot. This enables the robot to navigate in a complex, natural outdoor environment, relying on only a single ...on-board camera as sensory input. This is achieved through a twofold analysis of the visual data stream: a dense structure from motion algorithm calculates a depth map of the environment and a visual simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm builds a map of the surroundings using image features. This information enables a behavior-based robot motion and path planner to navigate the robot through the environment. In this paper, we show the theoretical aspects of setting up this architecture.
Purpose - At present, more than 100 million undetonated landmines left over from wars remain buried worldwide. These mines kill or injure approximately 3,000 individuals each year (80 persons per ...day), most of them civilians. They represent a particularly acute problem in developing countries and nations already economically hard hit by war. The problem of unexploded mines has become a serious international issue, with many people striving to find a solution. The purpose of this paper is to examine the requirements of the robotic systems for humanitarian demining purposes. It will discuss a hexapod walking robot developed at the Royal Military Academy of Brussels in collaboration with the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, in the framework of the Humanitarian Demining Project (HUDEM).Design methodology approach - Considerations for the design of the walking robot according to the humanitarian demining requirements are discussed in detail.Findings - A successful walking robot design for demining purposes must consider functional requirements relevant to this difficult application. The principal requirements are mentioned in this paper.Originality value - This paper is the result of the research of the HUDEM project team and it is of value to engineers and researchers developing robotic systems for humanitarian demining purposes.
To be able to operate and act successfully, the robot needs to know at any time where it is. This means the robot has to find out its location relative to the environment. This contribution ...introduces the increase of accuracy of mobile robot positioning in large outdoor environments based on data fusion from different sensors: camera, GPS, inertial navigation system (INS), and wheel encoders. The fusion is done in a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) approach. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
This paper describes on-going development of a multi robot control framework named CoRoBa. CoRoBa is theoretically founded by reifying Real Time Design Patterns. It uses CORBA as its communication ...Middleware and consequently benefits from the interoperability of this standard. A multi-robot 3D simulator written in Java3D integrates seamlessly with this framework. Several demonstration applications have been developed to validate the design and implementation options.
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