A cooperative rescue framework by using wireless sensor and actor networks

Recently, considerable research has been reported on the design of rescue framework, but mostly relies on teleoperated robots, or teams of wireless robots. This paper presents a cooperative rescue framework by using wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs), where the objective of actors is to reach the event area with the aid of sensors. When an emergency event is detected, the sensor nodes will transmit an event report to inform the actors. Considered the actor mobility and duty cycle of sensor nodes, the data forwarding process from sensor nodes to mobile actors is described as an agent-based search. Then an improved ballooning strategy is proposed to control the search process. After actors receive the event report, a potential-based controller is proposed to make the actors reach the event area while avoiding collision between actors. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.