Lab Meeting 15 Mar 2007 (Any): RFID-Based SLAM

Urban Search And Rescue (USAR) is a time critical task. Extraordinary circumstances after a real disaster make it very hard to apply common techniques. Firemen at 911 reported that they had major difficulties to orientate themselves after leaving collapsed buildings. The arbitrary structure of the environment and limited visibility conditions due to smoke, dust, and fire, prevent an easy distinction of different places. Therefore, it is proposed to solve the problem of data association by the active distribution and recognition of RFID tags. Furthermore, RFID tags can be utilized for a communication-free coordination of a robot team and used by human forces to store additional user data such as the number of victims located in a room or an indication of a hazardous area.

The work has been extensively tested on two different robot platforms, a 4WD (four wheeled drive) differentially steered robot for the autonomous team exploration of large office-like arenas, and a tracked robot for climbing 3D obstacles.

ICRA'07 Paper: RFID-Based Exploration for Large Robot Teams - [via] Link