Rescue Robot Navigation: Static Stability Estimation in Random Step Environment

Rescue robotics is the application of robotics to the search and rescue domain. The goal of rescue robotics is to extend the capabilities of human rescuers while also increasing their safety. During the rescue mission the mobile robot is deployed on the site, while the human operator is monitoring the robot's activities and giving the orders from a safe place. Thus the operator can not see the robot and the environment and a decision on the robot's path selection becomes very hard. Our goal is to provide a kind of automatic "pilot system" to propose an operator a good direction or several options to traverse the environment, taking into account the robot's static and dynamic properties. In this paper we present an algorithm for estimating the posture of the robot in a specific configuration from the static equilibrium point of view. The results obtained by the simulator agree with our prior expectations and were successfully confirmed by the set of experiments with a real robot.

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