An assessment of a Wireless Mesh Network performance for Urban Search and Rescue task

Abstract

In this paper we present a reliable system for predicting the body position, or pose, of Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) dogs. We demonstrate that the Canine Pose Estimation (CPE) system can provide a reliable estimate for some poses and when coupled with effective wireless transmission over a mesh network, pose information can be made available to remote a handler who cannot see her dog due to visual and physical obstructions. Pose estimates are time sensitive as the dog changes its body position often, thus it is important that pose data arrives at its destination quickly. Propagation delay and packet delivery ratio measuring algorithms were developed and used to appraise Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) performance as a means of carriage for this time-critical data. The experiments were conducted in the rooms of a building where the radio characteristics closely resembled those of a partially collapsed building-a typical US&R environment. This paper presents the results of experiments conducted in this environment--not through simulation. The results demonstrate that it is possible to receive the canine pose estimation data in real-time although accuracy of the results depend on the network size and the deployment environment.

Internet of Things in Animal Healthcare (IoTAH): Review of Recent Advancements in Architecture, Sensing Technologies and Real-Time Monitoring

“…The behavioral changes of animals can be predicted through the analysis of dairy farm images [4,5,8,12,17,[19][20][21] farm fields may change the way of animal health monitoring and also avoids the loss of animals due to health issues.…”

Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare

“…The authors of [21] propose the detection of continuous barking, derived from audio and body motions of USAR dogs, signaling the localization of victims searched. Likewise [22] proposes to transmit the pose of USAR dogs every 50ms through an adhoc mesh network, to interpret the dog's intention and predict search and rescue success. A motion sensor on a dog's collar for communication via the use of head gestures is proposed in [13].…”