The Project PRISMA: Post-Disaster Assessment with UAVs

In the context of emergency scenarios, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are extremely important instruments, in particular during monitoring tasks and in relation to the Post-Disaster assessment phase. The current paper describes a summary of the work performed during PRISMA [1], a project focused on the development and deployment of robots and autonomous systems able to operate in emergency scenarios, with a specific reference to monitoring and real-time intervention. Among other aspects, the investigation of strategies for mapping and for path following, for the implementation of Human-Swarm Interfaces and for the coverage of large areas have been performed, and they will be here summarized.

[1]  Maurizio Piaggio,et al.  A programming environment for real-time control of distributed multiple robotic systems , 2000, Adv. Robotics.

[2]  Richard E. Korf,et al.  Real-Time Heuristic Search , 1990, Artif. Intell..

[3]  Renato Zaccaria,et al.  Path Following for Unicycle Robots With an Arbitrary Path Curvature , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[4]  Renato Zaccaria,et al.  3D path following with no bounds on the path curvature through surface intersection , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[5]  Roland Siegwart,et al.  Designing, developing, and deploying systems to support human–robot teams in disaster response , 2014, Adv. Robotics.

[6]  Renato Zaccaria,et al.  Usability evaluation with different viewpoints of a Human-Swarm interface for UAVs control in formation , 2015, 2015 24th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN).

[7]  Robin R. Murphy,et al.  Cooperative use of unmanned sea surface and micro aerial vehicles at Hurricane Wilma , 2008 .

[8]  Paolo Fiorini,et al.  Search and Rescue Robotics , 2008, Springer Handbook of Robotics.

[9]  Robin R. Murphy,et al.  CONOPS and autonomy recommendations for VTOL small unmanned aerial system based on Hurricane Katrina operations , 2009 .

[10]  Jessie Y. C. Chen,et al.  Human Performance Issues and User Interface Design for Teleoperated Robots , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews).

[11]  Giorgio Cannata,et al.  A Minimalist Algorithm for Multirobot Continuous Coverage , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[12]  Peter Cheeseman,et al.  On the Representation and Estimation of Spatial Uncertainty , 1986 .

[13]  Roland Siegwart,et al.  Solar Airplane Conceptual Design and Performance Estimation , 2011, J. Intell. Robotic Syst..

[14]  Renato Zaccaria,et al.  Visual feedback with multiple cameras in a UAVs Human-Swarm Interface , 2016, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[15]  Kazuya Yoshida,et al.  Collaborative mapping of an earthquake‐damaged building via ground and aerial robots , 2012, J. Field Robotics.

[16]  Jianda Han,et al.  Search and Rescue Rotary‐Wing UAV and Its Application to the Lushan Ms 7.0 Earthquake , 2016, J. Field Robotics.

[17]  Antonio Sgorbissa.  Multi-Robot Systems and Distributed Intelligence: The ETHNOS Approach to Heterogeneity , 2006 .

[18]  Bernhard Rinner,et al.  Networked UAVs as aerial sensor network for disaster management applications , 2010, Elektrotech. Informationstechnik.

[19]  Andrew Calway,et al.  Real-Time Camera Tracking Using a Particle Filter , 2005, BMVC.

[20]  Gary R. Bradski,et al.  ORB: An efficient alternative to SIFT or SURF , 2011, 2011 International Conference on Computer Vision.

[21]  Reid G. Simmons,et al.  Easy and Hard Testbeds for Real-Time Search Algorithms , 1996, AAAI/IAAI, Vol. 1.

[22]  Daniel Serrano,et al.  illustrated in Figure 1. Urban search-and-rescue in the context of ICARUS is synonymous with operations in human inhabited regions in the aftermath of natural or man-made disasters such as earthquakes and industrial accidents. MSAR , 2013 .

[23]  Robin R. Murphy,et al.  Disaster Robotics , 2014, Springer Handbook of Robotics, 2nd Ed..

[24]  Tucker R. Balch,et al.  Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..