ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT) is in the process of developing intelligent mobile robots (IMR) to help them for disaster mitigation and firefighting.
Efforts have been made to equip the mobile robots with all modern sensing and communication devices with on-board computational capabilities.
A senior manager at Ignite, a department of the MoIT on Sunday said that the intelligent mobile robots have features including detection and extinguishing fire, intelligent behavior such as object detection, target tracking, collision avoidance, formation movement of a group of robots and autonomous and manual control.
“Now we are working on remote-controlled, heavy-duty robot (explosive ordnance disposal and observation robot) which would provide enhanced bomb disposal capabilities to EOD teams,” the official said.
MoIT is funding the project through National ICT Research and Development Fund and Principal Investigator’s Organisation (PIO) is PAF Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology. The cost of this on-going project was Rs14.68 million.
The official while seeking more funds for the advanced level robot said that the cost of locally manufactured robot would be around Rs4 million while the cost of imported robot was around $0.4 million. The IMRs with all of the state-of-the-art technologies built into it are very costly.
Giving further details, the official said IMRs have been built in-house and after completing all tests, they would be available for local industries/hospitals/offices after one year.
The intelligent mobile robots will be able to execute a mission by incorporating intelligent techniques and robust control algorithms.
The past records indicate a high frequency of disasters of multiple nature and magnitudes as experienced by Pakistani nation. These disasters include industrial fires, terrorism, floods and earthquakes.
The industrial sector of Pakistan is huge and consist of myriad industrial units ranging from cement manufacturing, dying units, steel, glass, paints and many others in which heavy machinery is utilised.
Due to the ad-hoc nature of industrial setup and absence of stringent rules and regulations governing the installation and commissioning of boilers, heaters and many other electro-mechanical equipment, accidents are frequent.
The firefighting department in most cities is unable to provide immediate support for extinguishing the fire.
The developed mobile robots can be included as a work force in firefighting department, he said.
The official said that intelligent mobile robots were extensively used nowadays in many applications and they are extremely helpful. They can be effectively utilised in life threatening missions as well as in harsh weathers for surveillance investigation, tracking, rescue operation and map generation.