International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2014)

Alive Human Body Detection and Tracking System Using an

Autonomous Pc Controlled Rescue Robot
Purnima G1, Asst. Prof. Aravind S2, Renju Mary Varghese3, Neethu Anna Mathew4, Gayathri C S5
1

Student, Sree Buddha College of Engineering for Women, Kerala, India

Asst. Prof. Department of Electronics and Communication, SBCEW, Kerala, India

The proposed system uses a PIR sensor in order to

detect the motion of living humans. The simulated robot
is assumed to have the capability to determine its current
location in real-time, to wirelessly communicate with the
rescue team, and to locally store the status and location
information about the trapped victims in case the wireless
communications link is temporarily disconnected.
Traditionally, equipped robots faced a lot of problems
[1], [5]: (i) A very high communication cost was incurred
due to the large number of transmitted images to the
operator. (ii) More than 25% of the communications
between Wireless robot and the control unit was
extremely noisy and therefore was useless. This
eventually led to a loss of communication between the
robots and the operator. As a result, the robots stopped
working totally. (iii) A very high processing cost is also
incurred by the Capturing, storing, and transmitting a
large number of images. The Pyro electric devices, such
as the PIR sensor, have elements made of a crystalline
material that generates an electric charge when exposed
to infrared radiation. The PIR Sensor requires a warmup time in order to function properly. This is due to the
settling time involved in learning its environment. This
could be anywhere from 1-2 Minutes. After this warm up
time, sensor will be ready to use.

Abstract-- The main aim of this embedded application is

to design a PC controlled Robot which can detect live
humans and transmit the location details wirelessly. It can
also be used in war fields and places where disaster has
occurred. Human detection is also required in hazardous
sectors like boilers, reactors where only authorized person
can enter. The live body sensor in this project is a special
type of sensor known as PIR sensor. Any alive body with a
temperature above absolute temperature emits radiations
which are invisible to the normal eye. It senses these passive
infrared rays to detect the live human. Human identity is
carried out using a Human live detection sensor. The PIR
sensor is used to detect the motion in any kind and will
inform to micro controller. In this project we are using
GSM based wireless system for the efficient communication.
If the micro controller unit receives the detected signal, it
will send a message through GSM modem. The GPS
receiver receives the Longitudinal and latitudinal value
when the system detects the movement of the human body it
sends the location details to the stations using GSM modem.
Keywords-- PIR sensor, Global Positioning System (GPS),
Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), ZigBee,
GUI interface.

I. INTRODUCTION
The live body sensor is a special type of sensor. It
senses the passive infrared rays, which are always
emitting from the live bodies that is human bodies. In this
project we are using ZigBee for the efficient wireless
communication. The GPS receiver receives the
Longitudinal and latitudinal value when the system
detects the movement of the human. This data is sent to
the remote PC using ZigBee transceiver. The whole
system is placed in a robotic car. The car is moved
remotely using the C# software running in PC through
the ZigBee.
According to the field of Urban Search and Rescue
(USAR), the probability of saving a victim is high within
the first 48 hours of the rescue operation, after that, the
probability becomes nearly zero. All of these tasks are
performed mostly by human and trained dogs, often in
very dangerous and risky situations. The rescuer may
become a victim who needs to be rescued. This is why
since some years mobile robots have been proposed to
help them and to perform tasks that neither dogs nor
existing tools can do. We will focus only on robots which
will work in a disaster environment of manmade.

II. RELATED W ORK

Remote Operated and Controlled Hexapod (ROACH)
[2]: ROACH is a six legged design that provides
significant advantages in mobility over wheeled and
tracked designs. It is equipped with predefined walking
gaits, cameras which transmit live audio and videos of
the disaster site, as well as information about locations of
objects with respect to the robots position to the
interface on the laptop.
Kohga: University of Tokyo - The most complicated
task for most of the USAR robots has been working on a
rough terrain. Specialized robots have been designed for
these types of environments such as KOHGA the snake
like robot [4]. The robot is constructed by connecting
multiple crawler vehicles serially, resulting in a long and
thin structure so that it can enter narrow space. These
robots came into existence in the early 21st century but
since then enormous improvements have been made in
the concept, design owing to which their capabilities
have improved significantly.
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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2014)
Bahadori presented Human Body Detection in the
Robocop Rescue Scenario an analysis of techniques that
have been studied in the recent years for human body
detection (HBD) via visual information [8]. The focus of
his work was on developing image processing routines
for autonomous robots operating for detecting victims in
rescue environments. The paper both discusses problems
arising in human body detection from visual information
and describes the methods that are more adequate to be
applied in a rescue scenario. Finally, some preliminary
experiments for such methods in recognizing rescue
victims are reported.

USAR robots aim to address the issues those exist in

traditional search and rescue operations. USARs can
make their way through debris and even the narrowest of
the pathways. Development of USARs entails numerous
challenges these include, accuracy, negotiating turns,
movement in difficult terrains, controlled or no
radiations. Size of the rescue robot also plays a crucial
role, the bigger the robot the bigger problems it can pose
such as it may cause movement of debris making
rescue operations even more intricate.
Sandeep Bhatia presented Alive Human Body
Detection system using an Autonomous Mobile Rescue
Robot which proposes a new approach for detecting
alive humans in destructed environments using an
autonomous robot is proposed [5]. The proposed system
uses an ultrasonic sensor in order to detect the existence
of living humans and a low-cost camera in order to
acquire a video of the scene as needed. Having detected a
sign of a living human, the ultrasonic sensor Triggers the
camera to show live scene. The video is then displayed
on the screen. This approach requires a relatively small
number of data to be acquired and processed during the
rescue operation. This way, the real-time cost of
processing and data transmission is considerably reduced.
This system has the potential to achieve high
performance in detecting alive humans in devastated
environments relatively quickly and cost-effectively.
Burion presented Human Detection for Robotic
Urban Search and Rescue - a project that aims to
provide a sensor suite for human detection for the USAR
robots [6]. This study evaluated several types of sensors
for detecting humans such as pyro electric sensor, USB
camera, microphone, and IR camera. The pyro electric
sensor was used to detect the human body radiation, but
its limitation was its binary output. The USB camera was
used for motion detection, but its limitation was its
sensitivity to changes in light intensity. The microphone
was used for long duration and high amplitude sound
detection, but it was severely affected by noise. Lastly,
the IR camera was used to detect humans by their heat
image, but it was affected by other nearby hot objects.
The main idea was to detect a change in the image scene
by checking the values of the pixels. Several images for
the scene were acquired and subtracted from each other
to discover if a motion has occurred. The used technique
was fairly efficient in detecting the victims. However, the
robot was not fully autonomous and was dependent on
the operator.
Pissokas presented Experiments with Sensors for
Urban Search and Rescue Robots describe the social
impact of urban devastations has given rise to the field of
Urban Search and Rescue Robotics [7]. The aim of this
article is to present our experience and experimental
results with various sensors designed and developed.

III. DESIGN AND INPLEMENTATION

A. System architecture
The power supply used here is a bridge rectifier with
5V and 3.3V regulators. 3.3V is used for GPS module.
All other ICs use 5V. Microcontroller used is 89C52. The
reset circuit used here is power on reset. An LCD display
is connected to P1 port of the microcontroller to display
the information. The ZigBee transceiver module receives
the control information from the PC wirelessly. The
microcontroller drives the motor of the robotic car. Motor
is connected to the microcontroller through relay drivers.
Relay driver is wired using transistor BC107 and Stepper
motor is interfaced using ULN2003 driver IC. The
voltage regulator supplies constant voltage to the level
shifter from the power supply by maintaining constant
DC voltages and avoiding unwanted spikes in current.
The level shifter helps to convert the high voltages of
RS-232 (which are +/-11V from the model computer) to
transmitter and receiver circuit levels (which 0 or +5V).
The system monitors the passive infrared rays through
the PIR sensor continuously. If rays are detected a high
value is sent to microcontroller. Then the microcontroller
reads the latitude and longitude information from the
GPS Receiver connected to the RXD pin. This
information is stored in the external memory which is a
NVRAM. Memory is connected to the microcontroller
using an octal latch. Microcontroller sends this
information through the ZigBee to the remote PC. LCD
displays the information about human detection.
Microcontroller switches between ZigBee and GPS
module using a Line driver IC and a Schmitt trigger
inverter. Remote PC is interfaced with ZigBee module.
Since ZigBee is a TTL device we have to convert the
signals to RS232 logic level. For this purpose an RS232
to TTL transceiver IC MAX232 is used.
B. System Design
1) Transmitter Section
In the figure 1, the transmitter section consists of a
power supply unit, microcontroller, GPS Receiver,
ZigBee transceiver, Display, motor drivers and display.
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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2014)
Signals from PIR sensors are given to the
microcontroller and this microcontroller will digitize the
signal and send it to the ZigBee. The controller has
peripheral features like inbuilt ADC, required to get the
signals from the various sensors. As live human body
emits thermal radiation it is received and manipulated by
the PIR sensor to detect humans. PIR sensors are passive
infra-red sensors. They detect change in the heat and this
can be used to detect movement of people. Infrared
sensors that are sensitive in the range 7 15 m could be
used to detect a human [3]. It has digital output and can
be directly given to the digital pins and no ADC is
needed. It operates at 5V DC.
ZigBee Transceiver it is used to send and receive data
between robot and the control unit. ZigBee is a digital
wireless communication protocol. It is a very low power
communication technology. ZigBee is a very versatile
communication technology motor denotes the robot
which can move over earthquake prone areas. Motor
drive is the interfacing circuit between microcontroller
and robot. The project uses DC motor. DC motors have
polarity and direction of rotation depends on direction of
current. But a DC motor cannot be interfaced to the
microcontroller directly because it requires much higher
voltage and current. Motor drive is used for this. It is
built using an NPN transistor (BC547). It acts as an
interfacing device to supply required power to the motor.

2) Receiver Section
In the receiver section the ZigBee receiver receives the
data form the ZigBee transmitter. A RS 232 cable is
needed to connect to a PC. The GUI interface is nothing
but a software application in order to record monitor or
manipulate the data received. It consists of AT89C52
microcontroller, MAX232 level converter which converts
RS-232 voltage level to TTL voltage level and TTL
voltage level to RS-232 voltage level.

ZigBee
Module
GUI
Interface

TTL-RS-232
Transceiver

Figure 2 Receiver section

C. System Implementation
As live human body emits thermal radiation it is
received and manipulated by the PIR sensor to detect
humans. Signals from PIR sensors are given to the
microcontroller and this microcontroller will digitize the
signal and send it to the ZigBee. ZigBee Transceiver it is
used to send and receive data between robot and the
control unit.The GUI interface is nothing but a software
application in order to record monitor or manipulate the
data received. The Robotic car we use here is a remote
controlled car that can be moved in all the four directions
with the transmitter section attached with it.

Power
supply

DC
motor

Motor
drivers

Memory

Memory
buffer

Micro
Controller
unit

Stepper
motor
Antenna

ZigBee
Transceiver

Display
PIR
sensor

PC

GPS
receiver

Figure 1 Transmitter section

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2014)
[6]

[7]

[8]

Steve Burion Human Detection for Robotic Urban Search and

Rescue Info science database of the publications and research
reports. Technical Report, February, 2004. Record number 29999.
Pissokas, John and Malcolm, Chris Experiments with Sensors for
Urban Search and Rescue Robots Dept. of Computer Science,
University of Essex and Division of Informatics, University of
Edinburgh, Scotland UK, 2001.
Bahadori, Shahram, Iocchi, Luca, Human Body Detection in the
RoboCup Rescue Scenario Department of informatics, Rome
Italy.

Authors Biographies
Aravind S, Assistant professor in the
Department
of
Electronics
and
Communication Engineering, Sree Buddha
College of Engineering for Women,
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala,
India. He obtained M.Tech degree in VLSI
and Embedded Systems from College of
Engineering
Chengannur,
Cochin
University in 2012. He received his B.Tech Degree in
Electronics and Communication Engineering from Cochin
University, Kerala, India, in 2009. His area of interest include
Network Theory, Signals and Systems, Embedded Systems,
Digital Electronics, DSP and VLSI.

Figure 3 Application Window

IV. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

In this project we implemented a low cost autonomous
pc controlled rescue robot. With the help of this robot,
search and rescue operations can be made much effective
and easier. The circuit was assembled on the PCB. After
assembling the circuit on the PCB, it was checked for
proper connections before switching on the power
supply. After switching on the power supply the PIR
module was checked for detection of human. Then the
robot car was tested by controlling using PC. And finally
the GPS receiver details were checked.
Many lives can be saved by using this autonomous
vehicle during an earthquake disaster in a short duration
which becomes time consuming and unaffected if done
manually. This vehicle can be improved by using high
range sensors and high capacity motors. Some more
sensors like mobile phone detector, metal detector etc.
can be implemented to make this vehicle more effective.

Purnima G, pursuing final year B.Tech

degree
in
Electronics
and
Communication
Engineering
from
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala,
India.

Renju Mary Varghese, pursuing final

year B.Tech degree in Electronics and
Communication
Engineering
from
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala,
India.

Neethu Anna Mathew, pursuing final

year B.Tech degree in Electronics and
Communication
Engineering
from
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala,
India.

REFERENCES
[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

Fahed Awad, Rufaida Shamroukh Human Detection by Robotic

Urban Search and Rescue Using Image Processing and Neural
Networks International Journal of Intelligence Science, 2014, PP.
4, 39-53.
Chris Cappello, Chad Olsen, Mike Auen Remote Operated and
Controlled Hexapod (ROACH) Robot, Rescue Robot League
Competition Atlanta, Georgia, USA May 7 10, 2005.
R. Fuksis, M. Greitans, E. Hermanis Motion Analysis and
Remote Control System using Pyroelectric Infrared Sensors
IEEE, 2008. No. 6(86), PP. 69-72.
Amerada, T., Yams, T., Igarashit, H., & Matsunos, F.
Development of the Snake-like Rescue Robot KOHGA IEEE,
2004, PP. 5081- 5086.
Sandeep Bhatia, Ajay Mudgil and Amita Soni Alive Human
Detection Using an Autonomous Mobile Rescue Robot,
Department of Electrical And Electronics, PEC University of
Technology, Chandigarh, India Vol. 02, July 2010.

Gayathri C S pursuing final year

B.Tech degree in Electronics and
Communication
Engineering
from
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala,
India.

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