HEterogeneous Robot Teams for Search and Rescue Operations (HETRO)

The HEterogeneous Robot Teams for Search and Rescue Operations (HETRO) project aims the development and implementation of an integrated system composed of several heterogeneous robotic modules for urban search and rescue operations. HETRO is targeted to support to Civil Protection Agencies, Fire brigades and Police forces when dealing with potentially dangerous scenarios such as natural and man-made disasters. These scenarios include large fires, earthquakes, explosions, industrial accidents, chemical and nuclear disasters, etc. The robotic HETRO system is meant for the replacement of human operators in hazardous tasks, for the support of rescue operations, and for integration with other search and rescue agents (e.g. humans, dogs, fixed sensors, etc.). The HETRO system will provide help and support functions to investigate environmental parameters, search for survivors, and locate sources of hazards such as chemical or gas spills, toxic pollution, pipe leaks, radioactivity, etc. The HETRO system will support the work of human rescuers by providing communication infrastructure, transporting equipment and performing manipulation tasks.

The proposed work focuses on five scientific areas, namely system architecture, network and middleware, sensors and data fusion, human-system interaction, and navigation, control and coordination. The definition of the system architecture will require the specification of the major components, their integration, the communication system, failure handling, operator interface, etc. Research work on the middleware layer will focus on the communication between the (sub-) components of the HETRO system. The choice of sensors and data fusion algorithms will take into account the problems of data acquisition, data analysis, and the transformation of the raw data into simplified models. The definition of the human-machine interface will focus on data representation solutions; multimodal user interfaces, monitoring systems, and ergonomic control of robotic modules. The work in the area of navigation, control and coordination will focus on steering behaviours, goal and strategy selection, conflict resolution, exploration, network maintenance, control of manipulators, etc.
The functionality of the HETRO system will be tested on a number of search and rescue scenarios.

robotics
urban search and rescue

PROFILE 1
experts in urban search and rescue operations (urban search and rescue expertise)

PROFILE 2
mobile robotics experts (navigation and control of robotic units, remotely controlled toys engineers, swarm robotic experts)
human-system interaction experts (environmental mapping, ergonomics, multimodal user interfaces)

Profile 1
Provide expertise and support for the development and the testing of the HETRO system
Provide expertise in the form of real-world needs so that the HETRO system targets actual problems in urban search and rescue operations.
Assume the leadership of some work packages

Profile 2
Provide solutions for the deployment of relatively cheap and expendable mobile units
Provide solutions for human control of groups of heterogeneous robotic untisAssume the leadership of some work packages

Profile 1
civil protection agencies
fire brigades
international urban search and rescue agencies
governmental urban search and rescue agencies

Profile 2
Large companies

No