Design and implementation of user-friendly remote controllers for rescue robots used at fire sites

Abstract

Robot applications with rescue operations have been widely developed for disaster prevention purposes such as fire-fighting robot, rescue robot, and surveillance robot. This paper proposes two novel wireless remote controllers which offer not only user friendly operating interface but also easy robot controls. The handheld type controller is able to be easily carried by fire fighters and the joystick based controller enables more accurate and rapid controls for specified tasks in emergence environment. Both controllers are designed to be capable of gathering environment information such as video data, temperature, gas concentration and etc. Through the performance evaluation and questionnaire survey with a mobile rescue robot system, we have analyzed their efficiency considering fire fighter's usability. Then by accepting the opinions of fire fighters, we suggest applicable scenarios for both controllers in expected fire sites.