An autonomous system of mobile robots for search in disaster affected sites

Search and rescue operations during disasters are normally unsafe and tedious to human firefighters. As an alternative, an autonomous system of mobile robots, which can do the search and rescue operation, will be an efficient mechanism. Most of the systems consisting of mobile robots involve human interaction and control largely, which is again less efficient. So development of an autonomous system of mobile robots which can explore an area and complete the search and rescue operation is important. Such a system should have the options to explore an area in an efficient way by the coordination of robots each other and localization schemes. An autonomous mobile robots system is implemented which explores an unknown area and builds a map of the area. The robots coordinate with each other by building local maps and sharing them with others to build the global map. The robots localize themself using trilateration localization scheme. Marking the area covered by each robot is done by placing RF ID tags in an optimized way. The proposed scheme is implemented in hardware using the FireBird V mobile robots.