Robot-Assisted Crowd Evacuation under Emergency Situations: A Survey

In the case of emergency situations, robotic systems can play a key role and save human lives in recovery and evacuation operations. To realize such a potential, we have to address many scientific and technical challenges encountered during robotic search and rescue missions. This paper reviews current state-of-the-art robotic technologies that have been deployed in the simulation of crowd evacuation, including both macroscopic and microscopic models used in simulating a crowd. Existing work on crowd simulation is analyzed and the robots used in crowd evacuation are introduced. Finally, the paper demonstrates how autonomous robots could be effectively deployed in disaster evacuation, as well as search and rescue missions.