SAR

Search and Rescue Robot (SAR)

Robotic assisted Urban Search and Rescue aims to minimise human involvement in high risk emergency situations. These may include disaster zones caused by nature, terrorism or contamination. While a fast and reliable method of detecting people trapped under rubble could save thousands of lives, the efficiency of reported standalone SAR robots has been impeded by several factors. These include accessibility, efficiency and cost.

This idea assumes a three generation hierarchy of robots, the grandmother, mother and daughter. The Grandmother is a large, complex robot designed to act as a launch platform for the mothers and as a base station to handle complex software tasks. The mother robots are very mobile, contain sensors for localisation, mapping and navigation, and are responsible for launching the daughters.

The daughters are launched from the mother, with a range of only 100 metres. They are small enough to crawl into crevices and fissures and are equipped with sensors to detect a trapped human. They are completely disposable, it is not expected that any of them will be recovered once launched from the mother. Communications with the daughters will only be short range, because there will always be either another daughter or a host mother robot within 100 metres. The daughter informs the mother that it has detected a person, the mother processes this information, providing localisation and other pertinent information to the grandmother that then coordinates a human rescue effort.

Current projects:

David Williamson - MSc (Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering) Student
This Masters project comprises the design, implementation and debugging of the core intelligence, sensors and electronics associated with the Mother. It also requires specifying the necessary Daughter interface and functionality to ensure complementary operation of these core components.

The proposed solution is built on a low-cost commercial platform and features communication via ZigBee, a 16-bit microprocessor, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis compass, CMOS camera, PIR sensor and infrared range sensors. The unit size is approximately 100 by 60 by 30 millimetres, and projected cost is around NZD$150.

Natalie Lawrence - 4th year Honours Student
This project is responsible for the selection and testing of the human-detection sensors to be mounted on the daughter robots. Suitable intelligence and sensor fusion must be employed to reliably detect the trapped person. These sensors must be small, robust, yet sensitive enough to be able to find an unconscious person in a variety of situations. Since the daughter robots will be disposable, these sensors must be inexpensive and due to the limited power supply of the daughters, must not consume significant amounts of power.