Robot Autonomous Fire Location using a Weighted Probability Algorithm

Abstract

Finding a fire inside of a structure without knowing its conditions poses a dangerous threat to the safety of firefighters. As a result, robots are being explored to increase awareness of the conditions inside structures before having firefighter enter. This thesis presents a method that autonomously guides a robot to the location of a fire inside a structure. The method uses classification of fire, smoke, and other fire environment objects to calculate a weighted probability. Weighted probability is a measurement that indicates the probability that a given region on an infra-red image will lead to fire. This method was tested on large-scale fire videos with a robot moving towards a fire and it is also compared to following the highest temperatures on the image. Sending a robot to find a fire has the potential to save the lives of firefighters.