Effective Robot Evacuation Strategies in Emergencies

Abstract

Recent efforts in human-robot interaction research has shed some light on the impact of human-robot interactions on human decisions during emergencies. It has been shown that presence of crowds during emergencies can influence evacuees to follow the crowd to find an exit. Research has shown that robots can be effective in guiding humans during emergencies and can reduce this `follow the crowd' behavior potentially providing life-saving benefit. These findings make robot guided evacuation methodologies an important area to explore further. In this paper we propose techniques that can be used to design effective evacuation methods. We explore the different strategies that can be employed to help evacuees find an exit sooner and avoid over-crowding to increase their chances of survival. We study two primary strategies, 1) shepherding method and 2) handoff method. Simulated experiments are performed to study the effectiveness of each strategy. The results show that shepherding method is more effective in directing people to the exit.