New Methods in using a Manipulator for Autonomous Victim Detection

In the present paper, we aim at examining the various aspects of using a robot as a rescuer to identify and localize the victims. Our robot serves as a mobile platform for carrying a 3-DOF¹ manipulator mounted on it. The presented robot has the ability to completely detect and localize the victim in environments referred to as yellow and orange arena in NIST terminology (A. Jacoff et al., 2001). In this paper, these types of environments which are more structured are classified as 2D environments such as an office environment. In unstructured environments, which are classified as 3D environments, the victims can be found in a semi-autonomous manner. These environments are called the red arena in NIST terminology