PRE2018 3 Group17
Group members
| Group Members | Student nr. |
| Diederik Geertsen | 1256521 |
| Cornelis Peter Hiemstra | 0958497 |
| Joël Peeters | 0939193 |
| Benn Proper | 0959190 |
| Laila Zouhair | 1260529 |
Ideas
- Omnidirectional 3D printer
- Breakfast bot
- Robot to remove microplastics from water
- Clothes folding robot
- Building guidance robot
- Disaster observation drones
Disaster observation using a network of drones
Problem statement and objectives
The search for survivors after disasters such as floods and earthquakes is an extremely time sensitive matter. Fast localisation and retrieval of victims is essential for increasing surviving chances, which creates an obvious application for automated systems.
The main goal of the design is to be able to identify the high priority zones following a natural disaster. These high priority zones could for example be the area with the highest density of survivors, or locations which are the easiest to reach for emergency services. The system should also plot the most efficient and safest route that can then be used by emergency services to quickly reach the survivors. This solution should ideally be deployed as fast as possible to provide a detailed overview of the situation the first moments after disaster struck. It should also be applicable in a large range of natural disasters, these should take into account the varying conditions of different disasters, for example the system should be able to deal with bad weather, rough terrain, high temperatures etc.
Users
What do the users require
Our users require a way to quickly get information about a large disaster. This would mean that we must automate this information gathering on different scales. The users have the problem that they cannot get to a disaster quick enough, and when they are at the disaster, they cannot get information quick enough because of the scale. For example, when there is a very large earthquake. The emergency services have no good way to get to the disaster, they do no immediately know the scale of the disaster and they do not know which parts really require there attention. This all costs much time, which can be greatly reduced. To get all this information really quickly, sometimes they use drones. These are manual controlled. This means that they can only gather information at as many places as they have people available. If we can make the robots independent and automated, while communicating with each other and giving important information to the users, this process would become much faster.
Who are the stakeholders?
There are different stakeholders with different roles in this project involved. They would all take advantage of a solution we provide to their problem. The three stakeholders are Users, Society and Enterprise. We will describe per category why this particular stakeholder is involved into our problem and how our project will contribute to a solution for their problems.
Users
The biggest group of stakeholders are the users, which consists of civilians, government organizations, and private organizations or non-government organizations. These would all take advantage of the solution we provide, in particular those which are our intended end-user, i.e. the groups which will be involved during a natural disaster. We shall describe how these groups use our solution
- Government Organizations
Organizations formed by the government to combat natural disasters will take the most advantage from our solution. When a natural disaster will take place on large scale, emergency services or other organizations want to gather information as quick as possible. With our solution, this will become automated and much quicker.
- Civilians
Civilians struck by natural disasters benefit from our solution. The quicker help comes, the smaller problems arising for civilians will be. This counts for medical care, but also search and rescue and preventing loss of private property.
- Private organizations/non-government organizations
Organizations could also use our solution to work for different purposes. For example as security of property. Next to that, our solution to the described problem could be used as a good solution for similar problems as government organizations are describing.
Society
The society in a whole would benefit greatly from our solution. Our solution is relative cheap, and would be a great addition or replacement to existing solutions. Our solution would contribute to prevent loss of life, loss of property and would help organizations greatly. Next to that, since it is not a expensive solution, it would be much more cost effective than existing solutions such as the manual controlled drone.
Enterprise
The enterprise would also benefit from our solution. Firstly, the usage of drones would be far greater than before. This would mean that enterprises could cash in into our solutions.
Approach and deliverables
In order to complete the project, first, a thorough literature study will be conducted that will be used to determine the state-of-the-art regarding drone technology as well as their current use in natural disasters and regarding the current other methods of observation during natural disasters and the problems and restrictions associated with these methods. Based on this information, an optimal observation strategy for a certain set of defined scenario's will be designed, based on the abilities of drones and maximizing the amount of new information a single drone can deliver. To provide evidence of the working of this strategy, a simulation will be made that shows how a network of drones would operate in such a disaster area. If enough time is left after these deliverables are finished, a small-scale test setup using a few drones can be used to show the functionality of the network in reality. The final report will exist of a literature study, an explanation of the optimized observation strategy, and the simulation. It will also include an expansive explanation of the choices made during each part of the project.
Milestones
The three main milestones that need to be reached are the finishing of the literature study, the observation strategy and the simulation.
Planning
Week 1
Problem-statement and objectives (Cornelis and Benn)
State-of-art (Every member provides at least five sources)
Users and their requirements (Diederik)
Approach, planning, milestones, and deliverables (Laila and Joël)
Week 2
Updated problem description
Concrete planning for project
Analysis of literature sources
Requirement analysis
USE cases
Task division for the report
Concrete plan
Week 3-6
Plan for the simulation
Dividing the tasks for the simulation
Work on simulation
Checking the RPC’s
Analysis of decisions made for the simulation and update if needed
Update the wiki
Literature study
Work on the report
Week 7
Finalize simulation
Prepare presentation
Finalize the wiki
Finalize the report
Week 8
Presentation
Hand in report
literature study/state of the art
http://cstwiki.wtb.tue.nl/index.php?title=PRE2018_3_Group17/SotA