Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Urban fires are probably the most frequent catastrophic incidents in urban areas, requiring a prompt response due to life endangerment in highly populated zones and the high risk of fire propagation to buildings and parked cars in the vicinity. Robot assistance has been identified as a valuable resource for such urban search and rescue (USAR) scenarios by taking advantage of robots’ expendability. However, it is still unclear or not quantified how advantageous such human–robot cooperation can be to the final outcome of firefighting operations and other USAR missions. This article reports research in this context by modeling key features of a firefighting mission in response to an urban fire in a large basement garage. Besides building a behavioral model of human firefighting teams based on interviews with a Portuguese Fire Department, and assessing their performance under different circumstances, this work studies the addition of robotic teams in cooperation with human firefighters to overcome communication issues and improve situation awareness. The results obtained highlight the importance of such human–robot partnership for a more effective response to an urban fire and mitigation of life endangerment of first responders and victims.

Keywords

Search and rescue simulation modeling multi-robot systems human–robot cooperation

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Couceiro

Portugal

Rocha

. A collective robotic architecture in search and rescue scenarios. In: Proceedings of the 28th annual ACM symposium on applied computing, Coimbra, Portugal, 18–22 March 2013, pp.64–69. ACM.

Witkowski

El Habbal

MAM

Herbrechtsmeier

, et al. Ad-hoc network communication infrastructure for multi-robot systems in disaster scenarios. In: Proceedings of IARP/EURON workshop on robotics for risky interventions and environmental surveillance (RISE 2008), Benicassim, Spain, 7–8 January 2008.

Gandhi

Ganz

Mullett

. FIREGUIDE: firefighter guide and tracker. In: 2010 Annual international conference of the IEEE engineering in medicine and biology, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 31 August–4 September 2010, pp.2037–2040. IEEE.

Pascucci

Panzieri

Marsella

, et al. A REference implementation of interoperable indoor location & communication systems for First REsponders: the REFIRE project. In: 2012 IEEE international symposium on safety, security, and rescue robotics (SSRR), College Station, TX, 5–8 November 2012, pp.1–5. IEEE.

Gancet

Motard

Naghsh

, et al. User interfaces for human robot interactions with a swarm of robots in support to firefighters. In: 2010 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA), Anchorage, AK, 4–8 May 2010, pp.2846–2851. IEEE.

Marjovi

Marques

Penders

. Guardians robot swarm exploration and firefighter assistance. In: Workshop on NRS in IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), St Louis, MO, 11–15 October 2009. IEEE.

Kruijff

GJM

Janíček

Keshavdas

, et al. (2014). Experience in system design for human-robot teaming in urban search and rescue. In: Field and service robotics. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer, 2014, pp. 111–125.

Kruijff-Korbayová

Colas

Hindriks

, et al. TRADR project: long-term human-robot teaming for robot assisted disaster response. KI - Künstliche Intelligenz 2015; 29: 193–201.

Murphy

Tadokoro

Nardi

, et al. Search and rescue robotics. In: Khatib

Siciliano

(eds) Springer handbook of robotics. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer, 2008, pp.1151–1173.

10.

Kim

Kang

Sun

, et al. Design and implementation of user-friendly remote controllers for rescue robots used at fire sites. In: Proceedings of SICE Annual Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, 18–21 August 2010, pp.875–880. IEEE.

11.

Doroodgar

Ficocelli

Mobedi

, et al. The search for survivors: cooperative human-robot interaction in search and rescue environments using semi-autonomous robots. In: 2010 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA), Anchorage, AK, 4–8 May 2010, pp.2858–2863. IEEE.

12.

Ohgai

Gohnai

Ikaruga

, et al. Cellular automata modeling for fire spreading as a tool to aid community-based planning for disaster mitigation. In: Timmermans

van Leeuwen

(eds) Recent advances in design and decision support systems in architecture and urban planning. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2004, pp.193–209.

13.

Wakamatsu

. The risk of fire. Arch Outline 1978; 21: 279–298.

14.

Heliövaara

. Computational models for human behavior in fire evacuations. Department of Engineering Physics and Mathematics, Helsinki University of Technology, 2007.

15.

De Luca

Mazzenga

Monti

, et al. Performance evaluation of indoor localization techniques based on RF power measurements from active or passive devices. EURASIP J Appl Sign Proc 2006; 2006: 160–160.

16.

Potter Electric Signal Company LLC. Fire alarm training manual. St. Louis, MO, 2010.

17.

Truax

(ed.). Handbook for acoustic ecology. The World Soundscape Project. Burnaby, Canada: Simon Fraser University, 1978.

18.

Howard

Multi-robot simultaneous localization and mapping using particle filters. Int J Robot Res 2006; 25:, 1243–1256.

19.

Machado Santos

Couceiro

Portugal

, et al. A sensor fusion layer to cope with reduced visibility in SLAM. J Intell Robot Syst 2015; 80: 401–422.

20.

Couceiro

Rocha

Ferreira

. (2011). A novel multi-robot exploration approach based on particle swarm optimization algorithms. In: 2011 IEEE international symposium on safety, security, and rescue robotics (SSRR), Kyoto, Japan, 1–5 November 2011, pp.327–332. IEEE.

21.

Tillett

Rao

Sahin

, et al. Darwinian Particle Swarm Optimization. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Indian international conference on artificial intelligence (IICAI-05), Pune, India, 20–22 December 2005, pp.1474–1487.

22.

Eberhart

Kennedy

. A new optimizer using particle swarm theory. In: Proceedings of the sixth international symposium on micro machine and human science, 1995 (MHS’95), Nagoya, Japan, 4–6 October 1995, pp.39–43. IEEE.

23.

Portugal

Rocha

RP.

Distributed multi-robot patrol: a scalable and fault-tolerant framework. Robot Auton Syst 2013; 61: 1572–1587.

24.

Navarro

Matía

. A proposal of a set of metrics for collective movement of robots. In: Proceedings of the workshop on good experimental methodology in robotics, at RSS 2009, Seattle, WA, 28 June 2009.

Fostering human–robot cooperative architectures for search and rescue missions in urban fires

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References