The unprecedented number and scales of natural and human-induced disasters in the past decade has urged the emergency search and rescue community around the world to seek for newer, more effective equipment to enhance their efficiency. Search and rescue technology to-date still rely on old technologies such as search dogs, camera mounted probes, and technology that has been in service for decad...

In this paper, we consider novel information sensemaking methods for search and rescue operations that combine principles of information fusion and collective intelligence in scalable solutions. We will elaborate on several approaches that originated in different areas of information integration, sensor data management, and multi-robot urban search and rescue missions.

This paper summarizes the main features of the PoAReT (Politecnico di Milano Autonomous Robotic Rescue Team) system that will participate in the Virtual Robot competition of the Rescue Simulation League at RoboCup 2013. The paper summarizes the structure of the 2012 system and introduces some improvements for the 2013 system.

In this paper we present a mixed-initiative planning approach to humanrobot interaction in a rescue domain. We deploy a model-based executive monitoring system to coordinate the operator interventions and the concurrent activities of a rescue rover. We show that this approach can enhance both the operator situation awarness and human-robot interaction for the execution and control of the divers...

As robots become increasingly prevalent in our society, it becomes increasingly important to endow them with natural language capabilities. Natural language capabilities are especially important for robots designed to operate in domains such as eldercare robotics, education robotics, space robotics, and urban search-and-rescue robotics. In eldercare robotics and education robotics, it may simpl...

This paper describes a novel approach for focusing the search for victims of a rescue robot in an unknown environment. Such a rescue operation under time constraints is driven by three opposing factors, namely the need to explore unknown territory, the requirement to maintain robot localization performance as well as map quality in the face of uncertainty, and the need to target the search to a...

In this paper, a novel pneumatic cylinder is proposed, named Magnetic Brake Cylinder. It is composed of a tank, a pneumatic cylinder, and a permanent magnet, and with this, the piston is held by the attractive force of the magnet until the pressure inside the tank is very high, offering a higher driving power than an ordinary cylinder when using the same pressure source. In addition, a control ...

68 AI MAGAZINE ■ The Twelfth Annual American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in Acapulco, Mexico, in conjunction with the Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The events included the Robot Host and Urban Search and Rescue competitions, the AAAI Robot Challenge, and the Robot Exhibition. In the Robot Host e...

This article reports on a field study conducted in 2002 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where 28 multi-operator single robot (MOSR) teams were videotaped as they teleoperated a rescue robot through an apartment in a collapsed building in search of a victim mannequin. Team communication analysis was conducted using the Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue Coding Scheme (RASAR-CS), in conjunction with th...

Behavioural cloning is a method for acquiring skills by building generalised behaviours based on the observations of human performance. In this work, we examine the application of behavioural cloning to autonomous navigation of a robot in an unstructured environment. In particular, we examine the traversal of the random stepfields, introduced in the Robocup Rescue Robot League competition, by a...