A semi-autonomous tracked robot system for rescue missions

Abstract

In this paper we describe our work in integrating the results of two previous researches carried on on two different robots. Both robots are designed to help human operators in rescue missions. In the first case, a wheeled robot has been used to develop some software modules. These modules provide the capabilities for autonomously explore an unknown environment and build a metric map while navigating. The second system has been designed to face more challenging scenarios: the robot has tracks and flippers, and features a semi-autonomous behavior to overcome small obstacles and avoid rollovers while moving on debris and unstructured ground. We show how the set of software modules of the first system has been installed on the tracked robot and merged with its semi-autonomous behavior algorithm, and we discuss the results of this integration with a set of experiments.