Posts Tagged: ‘robot-assisted disaster response’

TRADR demonstration for general public at the European Robotics League Emergency competition

15 September, 2017 Posted by tradr_admin

A presentation of the TRADR project and a life demonstration of the TRADR system took place as part of the Public Program accompanying the European Robotics League – Emergency competition taking place on September 15-23 2017 in Piombino, Italy. The ERL Emergency is a civilian, outdoor robotics competition, with a focus on realistic, multi-domain emergency response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the ERL Emergency Grand Challenge can only be overcome when land, underwater and flying robots successfully cooperate. A public event late night on Sunday September 17 featured three EU-funded projects in the area of emergency response: Walk-Man, Sherpa and TRADR. The TRADR coordinator Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova (DFKI MLT) together with Emanuele Gissi, a Fire Officer of the Italian Firecorps (Vigili del Fuoco) delivered a presentation about the scientific results of TRADR and the TRADR deployment in Amatrice after the devastating earthquake of August 2016. Luigi Freda (La Sapienza University, Rome) demonstrated two TRADR ground robots in action in autonomous multi-robot patrolling. The event was attended among others by Mady Delvaux, Member of the European Parliament,   Anne Bajart from the EC,   Alan Winfield from University of the West of England and the ERL Emergency Coordinator, Reinhard Lafrenz, Secretary General of euRobotics AISBL. The TRADR presentation and demonstration were a great success that draw the attention of a big audience despite the late night hour.

 

TRADR Robot-Assisted Disaster Response Tested By Dutch Firebrigade

26 June, 2017 Posted by tradr_admin

Partners of the TRADR project (Long-Term Human-Robot Teaming for Disaster Response) met for a Joint Exercise with end users from the Joint Firebrigade of the Rotterdam harbour region (Gezamenlijke Brandweer; https://www.gezamenlijke-brandweer.nl). After similar events in Italy and in Germany in previous years, this was the first such event in the Netherlands. It took place at a firebrigade training facility on June 26-30 2017. The purpose was to test the TRADR integrated system in a realistic scenario set up by the end users and obtain their feedback on the current system functionalities and usability

The system setup consisted of ground robots and a drone. It was used by a team of firemen who received training on various components of the TRADR system throughout the week, such as UGV control, UAV control, mapping, remote arm operation, adaptive traversability and the use of the TRADR system for tactical information management.

 

After that the full TRADR system was used in a series of exercises, in which the team had to perform a variety of situation assessment tasks (such as i.e., mapping, searching for victims, fire, smoke and leakage detection) in an environment too dangerous for humans to access, due to danger of explosions and collapsing structures. The functionalities of the integrated system included UGV and UAV operation, map creation, adaptive traversability, realtime gas and smoke detection, tactical information management, team activity reporting and speech processing to extract information about task assignment from human team communication.

 

 

 

 

The firemen were as always very enthusiastic about the TRADR system and the potential of robot-assisted disaster response in general.

The TRADR team had shown some of this potential during the real deployment in September 2016 in the earthquake-struck Amatrice, Italy (cf. www.tradr-project.eu for more details).

 

The ALCOR Team at the Edison Pulse Day

29 March, 2017 Posted by tradr_admin

Luigi Freda from the ALCOR lab , University La Sapienza in Rom, attended the Italian Event, Edison Pulse Day, and presented the TRADR project and the mission in Amatrice (by using videos on the youtube TRADR channel).
The event was mostly focused on Startups with an accent on Energy and relaunching new ideas after the crisis due to the earthquake.

Invited talk at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Sept. 15

15 September, 2016 Posted by tradr_admin

On Sep 15 Tomas Svoboda from the Czech Technical University in Prague gave an invited talk about robot-assisted disaster response at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT).

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) is a Foundation and financed by the State to conduct scientific research in the public interest, for the purpose of technological development.

T. Svoboda is Research Fellow and Assistant Professor at the Czech Technical University, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Cybernetics since 2003.

 

 

 

 

Presentation at CTIF Delegates Assembly & Symposium, Sep 8-9 2016 in Helsinki

10 September, 2016 Posted by tradr_admin

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On Sep 9 2016 the TRADR coordinator I. Kruijff-Korbayova gave an invited talk about robot-assisted disaster response in Helsinki at the Delegates Assembly & Symposium of CTIF, the International Association of Fire and Rescue Services.  CTIF was founded in 1999 as an international professional firebrigade competency network for encouraging and promoting co-operation among fire fighters and other experts in fire and rescue. It has members from 36 countries around the world.  Its work is organized by commissions which set up working groups on specific themes.

I. Kruijff-Korbayova is a member of the CTIF commission on Extrication and New Technology, which she has been invited to join after her invited talk at the International Conference of CTIF  on December 9 2015 at the Italian Firebrigade Academy (Istituto Superiore Anticendi, ISA) in Rome (see an earlier post). The commission for Extrication and New Technology was established in 2013 to work on standards in order to be able to harmonise information and training for the rescue services.

The presentation was part of the CTIF Symposium on”Responding to the Unexpected” and featured the results of the NIFTi and TRADR projects, including the recent success of the TRADR deployment in Amatrice, Italy, destroyed by a devastating earthquake on August 24 2016. The presentation was met with great resonance from the representatives of fire and rescue services, and many expressed interest to further explore the use of robots to support disaster response. TRADR will continue to strengthen the collaboration with these organizations.