A review of autonomous robotic search

The application-driven researches on autonomous robotic search having been paid continuous attentions for years, since robot(s) be capable of searching for target(s) taking the place of human beings in dangerous environment for secondary disaster avoidance. Thus the state of the art of this field was surveyed from the viewpoint of robotics, distributed sensor networks and intelligent control. First, a classification was proposed according to a metric of relative number relationship between robots and targets. Then the literature dealing with three modes, i.e., single-robot-single-target, multiple(swarm)-robot-single-target, and multiple(swarm)-robot multiple-target was taken for review. Accordingly, the natural scientific issues concerned with each mode, control techniques, as well as typical applications were summarized respectively. Also, the technical characteristics of the existing approaches were comparatively analyzed for disaster search-and-rescue application. Finally, swarm intelligence-based cooperative control method for autonomous robotic search was examined significantly on demand of distributed artificial intelligent decision making technique, in order to give more exposure to the latest ideas around fields of wireless sensor network and intelligent robotics for promoting the level of disaster prevention and reduction with robotic technology.