A Low-Cost Urban Search and Rescue Robot for Developing Countries

Abstract

Since urban search and rescue is a difficult domain for autonomous mobile robots to operate in, the environment can be expected to be highly unstructured, with many obstacles and hazards for a robot to deal with. Besides, if human rescue teams are going to accept robotic assistance, they need to be assured that the robots are going to be helpful, not a hindrance. With these factors in mind, we work toward the development of a swarm of small, inexpensive search and rescue robots. The platform has been developed to be low in cost and easy to construct from commonly available parts so that they are suitable for developing countries like Bangladesh. The robot can provide useful information to human rescuers without requiring specialized knowledge in operating robots. It can be controlled remotely from a station. It sends continuous thermal and video feed, environmental sensory data of the disaster site to the associated web application through the control station. It can run through rough terrain in a completely dark environment with the help of a powerful remote-controlled flashlight. It can detect living humans inside the rubble and can establish communication between them and the rescuers.