In disaster-stricken environments, it's vital to assess the damage quickly, analyse the stability of the environment, and allocate resources to the most vulnerable areas where victims might be present. These missions are difficult and dangerous to be conducted directly by humans. Using the complementary capabilities of both the ground and aerial robots, we investigate a collaborative approach of aerial and ground robots to address this problem. With an increased field of view, faster speed, and compact size, the aerial robot explores the area and creates a 3D feature-based map graph of the environment while providing a live video stream to the ground control station. Once the aerial robot finishes the exploration run, the ground control station processes the map and sends it to the ground robot. The ground robot, with its higher operation time, static stability, payload delivery and tele-conference capabilities, can then autonomously navigate to identified high-vulnerability locations. We have conducted experiments using a quadcopter and a hexapod robot in an indoor modelled environment with obstacles and uneven ground. Additionally, we have developed a low-cost drone add-on with value-added capabilities, such as victim detection, that can be attached to an off-the-shelf drone. The system was assessed for cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency, and scalability.

翻译：在受灾环境中，快速评估灾情、分析环境稳定性并将资源分配至可能存在受困人员的高风险区域至关重要。此类任务若由人类直接执行将面临巨大难度和危险性。我们利用地面与空中机器人的互补能力，探索了一种空地机器人协同方法来解决该问题。凭借更广阔的视野、更快的速度与紧凑体积，空中机器人可探索环境区域并构建基于三维特征的地图拓扑结构，同时向地面控制站传输实时视频流。当空中机器人完成探索任务后，地面控制站处理地图并发送给地面机器人。具备更长工作时间、静态稳定性、载荷运输及远程会议功能的地面机器人，即可自主导航至识别出的高风险位置。我们在室内模拟环境中使用四旋翼无人机与六足机器人进行了含障碍物及不平整地形的实验。此外，我们开发了一种低成本无人机外接装置，具备受害者检测等增值功能，可适配商用无人机。该系统的成本效益、能效及可扩展性均被评估。