UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab develops new technologies for robotic fire surveillance

Update 06/06/13: Our firefighting robot has been getting quite a big of media attention in the past few days, including:

c|net  http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57587839-1/segway-like-robot-helps-fight-fires-with-3d-thermal-imaging/

 IEEE Spectrum http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/ucsd-firefighting-robot-3d-thermal-imaging

Huffpost Tech, U.K.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/06/firefighting-robot-segway_n_3394826.html


Researchers in the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab have developed new image processing techniques for rapid exploration and characterization of structural fires by small Segway-like robotic vehicles.  

The robot's system takes the thermal data taken by the vehicle's small infrared camera and maps it onto a 3D scene constructed from the images taken by the vehicle's pair of stereo RGB cameras.  

This allows small mobile robotic vehicles to create an temperature-painted virtual reality that can be used immediately by first responders as the robot drives through a potentially smoky building with hot spots and people distributed within it. 
This new technology is described in the video below -- look in particular for the signature of the fingerprints in the lower-right corner at 1:21, as well as the explosive ending.