Robot Guided Evacuation with Viewpoint Constraints

We present a viewpoint-based non-linear Model Predictive Control (MPC) for evacuation guiding robots. Specif- ically, the proposed MPC algorithm enables evacuation guiding robots to track and guide cooperative human targets in emer- gency scenarios. Our algorithm accounts for the environment layout as well as distances between the robot and human target and distance to the goal location. A key challenge for evacuation guiding robot is the trade-off between its planned motion for leading the target toward a goal position and staying in the target’s viewpoint while maintaining line-of-sight for guiding. We illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed evacuation guid- ing algorithm in both simulated and real-world environments with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) guiding a human. Our results suggest that using the contextual information from the environment for motion planning, increases the visibility of the guiding UAV to the human while achieving faster total evacuation time.