TY - GEN
T1 - Aiding Emergency Evacuations Using Obstacle-Aware Path Clearing
AU - Nayyar, Mollik
AU - Wagner, Alan R.
N1 - Funding Information:
*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-1830390. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation 1Mollik Nayyar is a Ph.D student in the Aerospace Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA mxn244@psu.edu 2Alan R. Wagner is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Aerospace Engineering and a Rock Ethics Institute Researcher, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA alan.r.wagner@psu.edu
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 IEEE.
PY - 2021/7/8
Y1 - 2021/7/8
N2 - We seek to develop robots capable of helping people evacuate. Some evacuation environments, however, may have obstacles blocking the person's path to the closest exit. This paper therefore explores the possibility of creating robots that detect and move obstacles in order to open evacuation pathways. Experiments were conducted using a simulated autonomous robot in photorealistic indoor environments. The system uses computer vision algorithms to gather information from the environment. We show that the gathered information can be used to decide whether an obstacle can or needs to be moved in order to open a new evacuation pathway. We then use simple push manipulations to successfully remove obstacles from a path. We show that the system decreases evacuation time for evacuees in simulations of indoor environments.
AB - We seek to develop robots capable of helping people evacuate. Some evacuation environments, however, may have obstacles blocking the person's path to the closest exit. This paper therefore explores the possibility of creating robots that detect and move obstacles in order to open evacuation pathways. Experiments were conducted using a simulated autonomous robot in photorealistic indoor environments. The system uses computer vision algorithms to gather information from the environment. We show that the gathered information can be used to decide whether an obstacle can or needs to be moved in order to open a new evacuation pathway. We then use simple push manipulations to successfully remove obstacles from a path. We show that the system decreases evacuation time for evacuees in simulations of indoor environments.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85116427052&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85116427052&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ARSO51874.2021.9542834
DO - 10.1109/ARSO51874.2021.9542834
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85116427052
T3 - Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, ARSO
SP - 7
EP - 14
BT - 2021 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts, ARSO 2021
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 2021 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts, ARSO 2021
Y2 - 8 July 2021 through 10 July 2021
ER -