Uncertainty-aware full-body motion planning of aerial and multi-legged robots for urban search and rescue operations

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With the increasing severity and frequency of natural disasters such as tornados, floods, and many others, the 21st Century presents unique challenges to disaster response. The capabilities of autonomous robots have the potential to be used as effective tools for Urban Search & Rescue (USAR) operations in complex confined environments - both structured and unstructured - such as those encountered inside collapsed buildings and in burning infrastructure, among many others. However, major challenges related to autonomy, locomotion, and adaptability remain before robots can be effectively deployed inside such spaces where safety-critical decisions must often be made despite uncertainty in the estimation, execution, and the environment. These problems can often be cast as a class of problems for which finding an exact solution is challenging. This project will develop whole-body tractable motion-planning solutions enabling robotic systems to operate inside chaotic hazardous confined spaces where real-time operation is essential. The results will enable to deploy drones and multi-legged robots under uncertainty estimation via sophisticated estimation schemes like visual-inertial odometry that depend on the distribution of the features in the environment. The work is important to reduce the effects of natural and other disasters that cause billions of dollars in economic losses every year. Using the wealth of experience in Canada's emergency agencies and disaster response, the project will develop effective robotic tools for USAR that can be in position and deployed directly following an incident of structural collapse. The results will render emergency preparedness and response activities more effective and thereby save more lives and reduce community recovery time. The outcomes will improve efficiency in disaster response operations at a disaster site and provide the means to increase capacity to prepare for, mobilize and coordinate USAR assistance in support of affected communities in collapsed structure emergencies. The results will support capacity-building at the national, global, and regional levels. In collaboration with first response organizations, 6 graduate and 10 BSc students will be trained in a multidisciplinary team environment.