Current robot competition provides both students and researchers a platform to experiment with related technology and skills to solve challenging problems. However, the entry point for participation requires very demanding prerequisites of the participants. Even though robot competition is gaining popularity as a form of digital entertainment, it still remains a very specialised domain catering...

This study concerns the design and prototype of four different mobile robot platforms for rescue robot operations after an earthquake. At first, a test field is constructed to represent a mildly damaged earthquake zone. The test field consists of eight different sections: sand, gravel, ditch, water, bridge, incline, decline, and turn. The mechanical structure, electronics, software, communicati...

The thirteenth AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition was held last July, in conjunction with the Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2004), in San Jose, California. The primary purpose of the Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition is to bring together researchers and students from academe and industry to showcase the latest state-of-the-art mobile robot capab...

In this work, we present a framework that allows a single operator to monitor and control the operations of multiple robots during Search & Rescue missions in an alpine environment. This work is framed in the context of the SHERPA project whose goal is to develop a mixed ground and aerial robotic platform to support search and rescue activities in alpine scenario. In this context, the human ope...

Fire fighters are normally overprotected during their working hours because of the tendency to keep the personal protection level sufficiently high in case of the worst possible scenarios. This study investigated the effects of task-fitted protective clothing on thermal strain in fire fighters as compared to EN 469:2005 protective clothing during a prolonged (2 1/2 hrs) job-related rescue drill...

When a natural or human-caused disaster, such as flood earthquake or explosion, strikes urban search and rescue (USAR) teams are deployed to the affected area in order to locate; excavate; and treat survivors trapped in the ruins. The deployment of an USAR team to an affected area is called a search and rescue (SAR) mission. During an SAR mission the team members have to work together in extrem...

This paper describes the use of modular robots as the next generation search and rescue robots for humanitarian logistics and developed an immunity-based control framework called General Suppression Control Framework (GSCF) for controlling these robots. The application of GSCF on heterogeneous-distributed robotics systems is studied where the behaviors of the search and rescue agents are mirror...

BACKGROUND The mining industry has one of the highest occupational rates of serious injury and fatality. Mine staff involved with rescue operations are often required to respond to physically challenging situations. This paper describes the physical attributes of mining rescue personnel. METHODS 91 rescue personnel (34 +/- 8.6 yrs, 1.79 +/- 0.07 m, 90 +/- 15.0 kg) participating in the Queensl...

background:in the recent decade, the reverse genetics method has been broadly used for rescue of negative-stranded rna viruses from cdna or viral minigenomes. this technique has been applied to study different steps in virus replication and virus-host interactions. reverse genetics could also be implemented for design of new vaccines. the t7 rna polymerase activity as well as virus (nucleocapsi...

RESCUE is a concurrent engineering approach to the specification of operational requirements in the domain of air traffic management. In RESCUE, we build on use cases and scenarios, using work from human-computer interaction (HCI) and elsewhere in requirements engineering. Our aim is to provide some validation of the use case models through which requirements are elicited, and thereby obtain a ...