About The Project

This project aims to improve autonomous robotics for Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) scenarios. In US&R operations, robots are used to explore partially collapsed buildings and locate trapped victims. The robot generates a map of the building and marks the location of victims.

This project will use squared fiducial markers, called ArUco markers, to represent the victims. A turtlebot3, the explorer, will be used to locate the markers . A second turtlebot3, the follower, will then be deployed to retrieve the markers' indicated victims. A ROS package in C++ following OOP concepts has been developed for this project.

Summary of tasks achieved:

• Created and stored the map of the environment using gmapping package.
• Navigated explorer through the map using move_base for different target locations accessed from parameter server (Detecting victims).
• Broadcasted and created transforms between /marker_frame and /map frames for follower.
• Based on this, the follower visits the ArUco markers in fashion of increasing tag IDs (Rescuing victims)

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Demo

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Documentation

The documentation for this project can be found at this link Documentation.

Report

• The detailed problem statement and additional background information can be found here. Problem_Statement
• The main report which dicusses our approach in great detail can be found here. Report

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Getting Started

These are the instructions to get started on the project. To get a local copy up and running follow these simple steps.

Prerequisites

• ROS 1 with Turtlebot3 installed
• Catkin workspace catkin_ws
• OS - Linux (tested)

Installation

Installing the dependencies and running the code.

1. Clone the repo

   git clone https://github.com/KACHAPPILLY2021/urban_search_and_rescue.git

2. To install navigation and slam dependencies

   cd ~/urban_search_and_rescue/script

   sudo chmod a+rwx install.bash

   ./install.bash

3. Copy the ROS package final_project and place it inside catkin_ws/src and build

   catkin build final_project

4. Save this command in bashrc file for loading ArUco markers in gazebo

   export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH:/home/<username>/catkin_ws/src/final_project/models

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Usage

To run this project, only two commands are required.

1. Source the workspace
2. To start Gazebo and RViz, and for setting parameters on the Parameter Server and spawning robots:

   roslaunch final_project multiple_robots.launch

3. Open new terminal and run the node:

   rosrun final_project final_project_node

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Contributors

• Hemanth Joseph
• Jeffin Johny
• Pradip Kathiriya

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Contact

Jeffin Johny K -

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License

Distributed under the MIT License. See MIT for more information.

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