Autonomous Transportation and Deployment with Aerial Robots for Search and Rescue Missions

Abstract

It is generally accepted that systems composed of multiple aerial robots with autonomous cooperation capabilities can assist responders in many search and rescue (SAR) scenarios. In most of the previous research work, the aerial robots are mainly considered as platforms for environmental sensing and have not been used to assist victims. In this paper, outdoors field experiments of transportation and accurate deployment of loads, with single/multiple autonomous aerial vehicles are presented. This is a novel feature that opens the possibility to use aerial robots to assist victims during the rescue phase operations. The accuracy in the deployment location is a critical issue in SAR scenarios where injured people may have very limited mobility. The presented system is composed of up to three small size helicopters and features the cooperative sensing, using several different sensor types. The system supports several forms of cooperative actuation as well, ranging from the cooperative deployment of small sen- sors/objects to the coupled transportation of slung loads. Within this paper the complete system is described, outlining the used hardware and the used software framework, as well as the used approaches for modeling and control. Addition- ally, the results of several flight field experiments are presented, including the description of the worldwide first successful autonomous load transportation experiment, using three cou- pled small size helicopters (conducted in December 2007). During these experiments strong steady winds and wind gusts were present. Various solutions and lessons learned from the design and operation of the system are also provided.