Review: Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as Mobile Sensing Platforms (MSPs) for Disaster Response, Civil Security and Public Safety

The use of UAVs in areas ranging from agriculture over urban services to entertainment or simply as a hobby has rapidly grown over the last years. Regarding serious/commercial applications, UAVs have been considered in the literature, especially as mobile sensing/actuation platforms (i.e., as a delivery platform for an increasingly wide range of...

Persistent robot-assisted disaster response

We report on a field exercise in which a team of human fire-fighters used robots to enact a realistic disaster response mission in an industrial environment. In this exercise we evaluated the technical working of an integrated robotic system and gained insights concerning the manner in which robots and information streams can be utilized...

Dynamic formulation for humanitarian response operations incorporating multiple organisations

Disasters represent a significant challenge for countries globally. Balancing human and material resources during these situations is not a trivial issue, and that is further complicated by the participation of several actors at multiple periods. However, there is an absence of articles considering the importance of deploying only the required...

Incremental development of large-scale human-robot teamwork in disaster response environments

We report on the latest large-scale disaster-response exercise conducted by our project, which involves a robotic system with both ground robots (UGVs) and aerial robots (UAVs). In particularly, we focus on aspects related to Human-Robot teaming, and the uptake of new technology by end-users. © 2017 Authors. ACM SIGAI; ACM SIGCHI; IEEE Robotics...

Free look UGV teleoperation control tested in game environment: Enhanced performance and reduced workload

Concurrent telecontrol of the chassis and camera of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) is a demanding task for Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) teams. The standard way of controlling UGVs is called Tank Control (TC), but there is reason to believe that Free Look Control (FLC), a control mode used in games, could reduce this load substantially by...

Human-Robot Teamwork in USAR Environments: The TRADR Project

The TRADR project aims at developing methods and models for human-robot teamwork, enabling robots to operate in search and rescue environments alongside humans as teammates, rather than as tools. Through a user-centered cognitive engineering method, human-robot teamwork is analyzed, modeled, implemented and evaluated in an iterative fashion....

Designing, developing, and deploying systems to support human-robot teams in disaster response

This paper describes our experience in designing, developing and deploying systems for supporting human-robot teams during disaster response. It is based on R&D performed in the EU-funded project NIFTi. NIFTi aimed at building intelligent, collaborative robots that could work together with humans in exploring a disaster site, to make a...

Utilizing the potential of the affected population and prevalent mobile technology during disaster response: Propositions from a literature survey

Despite the growing awareness of the untapped potential of the affected population in a disaster situation, their inclusion in a disaster management is extremely limited. This study aims to survey the literature to see whether utilizing the affected people and prevalent mobile technology can be used during disaster response. The idea is to...

Distributed collaborative situation-map making for disaster response

A situation map that shows the overview of a disaster situation serves as a valuable tool for disaster response teams. It helps them to orientate their location and to make disaster response decisions. It is, however, a complicated task to rapidly generate a complete and comprehensive situation map of a disaster area, particularly due to the...

Effect of map sharing and confidence information in situation-map making

Motivation - A situation map that shows the overview of a disaster situation serves as a valuable tool for disaster response teams. It helps them orientate their location and make disaster response decisions. It is, however, a quite complicated task to rapidly generate a comprehensive situation map of a disaster area. In this paper, we report on...

Collaborative situational mapping during emergency response

During emergency response, individuals observe only part of the picture, sharing of information is needed to get the required complete picture. The aim of our study is to get insight in the collaborative mapping process in order to derive requirements for a map-sharing tool. First, we analyzed the domain to assess the mapping processes, to...

Critical Infrastructures: A Weak Spot in Disaster and Emergency Response

How to plan for emergency and disaster response operations in view of structural risk reduction

Increase of economic activity, population density, choke points by multiple use of space, traffic nodes (mega-storey) high-rises etc. make our society more vulnerable. At the same time, there is a trend of increase in safety standard with political consequences. A disaster plan shall be ready and the mayor of a city is held responsible. It calls...