Robot Assistance Following Italian Earthquake

Robot Assistance Following Italian Earthquake

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In the aftermath of the earthquake that struck the Italian town of Amatrice and its surrounding region a couple of months ago, Italian authorities requested the help of the EU-funded TRADR project, a human-robot teaming for robot-assisted disaster response. The project stepped up and quickly deployed two Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to the devastated region.

The team’s mission was to use their equipment in order to provide 3D textured models of two churches located in Amatrice, the Churches of San Francesco and Sant’ Agostino. Both are national heritage monuments from the 14th Century, which following the earthquake, were in a state of partial collapse and in need of urgent partial repair to prevent potential further destruction.The models would assist Italian authorities plan the repair operations and assess the state of various objects of cultural value inside the churches, such as valuable frescos.

The project, which is developing solutions for robot-assisted disaster management, quickly assembled a multinational team comprising project members from Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic at short notice and arrived at the earthquake zone within 48 hours of receiving the official request for assistance from the Italian Fire Brigade.

The project team deployed two UGVs into the San Francesco Church, teleoperating them entirely out of line of sight, and partially in collaboration with each other – one UGV provided a view of the other one. This allowed for easy manoeuvring in a very constrained space with low connection bandwidth. One of the UGVs operated in the church continuously for four hours. A UAV was also present for a short time in parallel and provided additional views of the UGVs.

According to cordis.europa.eu, several flights were carried out on the outside, and one flight inside of each of the two churches. The project team reported that entering the building with a UAV was a tough challenge, which was manageable thanks to collaboration between three UAVs operated in parallel. While one drone was entering through a hole in the roof, the other two were providing simultaneous video feed from different angles that the pilot was able to use as an additional source of orientation. An assistant was continuously watching the video and giving verbal instructions.

Most importantly, the mission fulfilled its goal to collect enough data for the construction of high quality textured 3D models that will be invaluable in assessing and repairing the damaged churches over the coming months. The models have been delivered to the Italian Fire Brigade and the Italian Ministry of Culture. The project team also views their ability to quickly come together and deploy a team to the disaster area at such short notice as an important achievement.