NCCR Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge

Background

Rescue operations can greatly benefit from robotics technology. After a natural disaster such as an earthquake or flood, it is often very dangerous for teams of rescue workers to go into affected areas to locate victims. The idea behind robots for rescue activities is to create robust robots that can travel into areas too dangerous for humans and rescue dogs. Robots can be used to assess the situation (e.g. the integrity of a building) and to locate people who may be trapped and to relay the location back to the rescue teams, so that all efforts can be concentrated on areas where victims are known to be.

Vision

• Developing methods to allow autonomous navigation in challenging conditions.
• Design robots that are easily transported.
• Can function efficiently in all weather conditions.
• Have long lasting power.
• Can navigate themselves and have effective enough sensors to pick out victims.

Project Goals

The main goal is to develop a low latency state estimation pipeline using standard cameras in combination with event cameras, which offer increased robustness to motion blur, high dynamic range, and low latency, thus allowing operation closed to obstacles and in extremely challenging lighting conditions.