Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
the debris area, after all of which a team of human rescuers should be
able quickly to locate and extract victims.
One of the leading research establishments in this field is the Idaho
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) at Idaho
Falls (see Figure 53 ) . In winning the 2003 search and rescue competition
jointly sponsored by DARPA and the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence, the INEEL robot was able to enter areas inaccessible to other
competitors and was reliably able to identify the ID tags of the “victims”,
as well as their location within the building and whether they were still
“al ive”.
A major thrust of the INEEL approach to robotic search and rescue
lies in allowing a robot to operate either entirely autonomously, or under
the partial or full control of a human operator. In this way, as the capa-
bilities and limitations change during a crisis for both the human oper-
ator and the robot, due either to problems in technical communication
between them or to other factors, the system can shift seamlessly from
one mode into another. INEEL is also developing a method for employ-
ing swarms of robots at a disaster site, all working in collaboration in
much the same way as does a robot Soccer team.
Figure 53. An INEEL search and rescue robot (Courtesy of the Idaho National labora-
tory, photo provided by Miles Walton)
 
 
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