Heterogenous Collaboration: A new approach for search and rescue operations

Abstract

Urban search and rescue (USAR) remains a challenging application domain despite recent and rapid advancements in robotics. Navigating complex environments is difficult for robotic architectures due to the variation in surface composition and the range of terrain feature sizes. This variety of scenarios incentivize creating a range of different robot designs, but how to effectively use these robots together remains uncertain. Soft robots and centimeter (cm) scale robots have been studied for their potential uses in USAR operations due to their ability to pass through narrow spaces by deforming to adapt to the environment or by virtue of their small size. However, both classes still poses significant challenges in control, limited operational domain, and runtime. In this paper, we demonstrate how collaborative behavior of Vine Robots, i.e. soft inflatable growing robots, and RESCUE Rollers, i.e. cm-scale mobile robots, can expand the reachable area for each robot in rescue-like operations. We accomplish this expansion by equipping the Vine robot to carry and deploy the RESCUE Rollers, and by using the RESCUE Rollers to improve the maneuvarability of Vine Robots by external steering. Through experimental characterization of the necessary interaction forces and an example scenario of collaborative behavior to reach the top of a ramp, we demonstrate that this approach of physical heterogeneous collaboration can lead to increased capabilities of all systems involved.