A Four Wheel Drive Boom Lift Robot for Bush Fire Fighting
This paper concerns the development of a semi-autonomous 40 foot boom lift vehicle for robotic bush fire fighting support which aims at minimising risk of injury or death by bush fire fighters in critical conditions. The vehicle is intended to be multi-pu
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Abstract. This paper concerns the development of a semi-autonomous 40 foot boom lift vehicle for robotic bush fire fighting support which aims at minimising risk of injury or death by bush fire fighters in critical conditions. The vehicle is intended to be multi-purpose and support forward scout, search and rescue and actual fire fighting activities alongside human operatives. Multiple level control strategies, inspired by an earlier semi-autonomous wheelchair project, are being implemented. Progress to date is presented.
1 Introduction The reduction of risk to human life and injury made possible with robotic support for bush fire fighting is clearly worth investigating. This paper considers the instrumentation and deployment of a 4WD boom lift as a robotic vehicle capable of fire front monitoring, search and rescue and actual fire fighting activities to provide such support to human operatives who remain ‘in the loop’ for navigation and mission control so that human judgement and machine capability can achieve what neither could alone. Bush fire fighting is a dangerous activity both for trapped victims and County Fire Authority personnel. It is also the case that humans should not be put in severe life threatening situations merely to save property from fire destruction. Conditions affecting the appropriate strategies for fire fighting can change rapidly and require immediate remedial action dependant on the experienced judgement of responsible humans. Weather conditions, discovery of trapped humans, dwindling water and personnel resources can all have crucial impacts on the task at hand. Having robotic vehicles on hand to deploy on tasks too risky for humans to undertake could be the way forward. Three support activities readily come to mind, others may also be exposed with experience. The first is concerned with ‘forward scout’ activity to monitor and report back fire front and accessibility conditions before deploying humans to fight the blaze at those locations. The second concerns the discovery and rescue of distressed humans who may have been exposed to high levels of smoke and heat or are otherwise in severe danger. It may be that such humans are in an unconscious state and require careful handling in the rescue process. Where the rescue itself is too dangerous for humans, the robotic alternative could be essential. The third support role is the most obvious one – to direct water at hot spots too dangerous for humans to access. O. Khatib, V. Kumar, and D. Rus (Eds.) Experimental Robotics, STAR 39, pp. 245–255, 2008. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008 springerlink.com
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R. Jarvis
Whilst the three support tasks described above each have their special requirements, they also have a number of shared needs in relation to sensor feedback and analysis, as well as navigation modalities. In this paper it is argued that, whilst not necessarily ideal for all three of the above support tasks, a 4WD boom lift could be considered as being able to carry out all three with some degree of success. For the appli
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