A Co-operative Network of Rescue Robots for Disaster Management

As a part of the broader goal of engaging robotics technology for the welfare of mankind, we propose to develop a co-operative network of intelligent rescue robots for natural disaster management. Over the last decade, rescue robots played an important role to reduce the damages caused by several natural disasters like Tohoku earthquake (Japan, 2011), Haiti earthquake (2010), Hurricane Katrina (2005) etc. While many powerful and intelligent rescue robots have been developed [1–4], they are typcially designed to work as individual agents unaware of the presence of other robots. We propose to build an intelligent co-operative network of rescue robots, so that a group of robots can communicate, plan effectively, learn from each other, and ask for help in completing the rescue operation, if necessary. A group of robots working as co-operative agents can significantly improve their efficiency, both in terms of rescue capability, and cost. Moreover, allowing robots to perform dynamic planning and collaborative learning will reduce burden of the human controllers.