Ivan Maza: imaza@cartuja.us.es
Antidio Viguria: antidio@cartuja.us.es
Anibal Ollero: aollero@cartuja.us.es

This paper presents a system for the coordination of aerial and ground robots networked with other objects, including the nodes of wireless sensor networks, for applications such as surveillance and intervention in emergency management. The system allows the centralized or distributed execution of missions. The robot team can provide transport and communication relay services to other robots during the mission. The distributed allocation of services and tasks to the robots has been implemented using a marketbased approach. The paper presents a demonstration with a team of heterogeneous robots (aerial and ground) cooperating in a mission of fire detection and extinguishing.

Demonstration Video:

This demonstration was designed to be significant for many disaster management activities. Then, it involves a team of robots to perform the following activities: detection of  “dangerous events”, confirmation, localization, monitoring and actuation. The demonstration involved three different robots: the autonomous ground vehicle ROMEO-4R developed by the GRVC at the University of Seville, provided with a trailer for helicopter take-off and landing, the helicopter HERO2 also developed by GRVC, and a mobile fire extinguisher unit. This unit was the all terrain tracked vehicle AURIGA developed by the University of Malaga which was teleoperated in this experiment from a laptop. AURIGA was provided with a conventional fire extinguisher.