Assessing the Search and Rescue Domain as an Applied and Realistic Benchmark for Robotic Systems

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current state of SAR robotics, highlighting applications, requirements, and research directions, proposing SAR as a practical benchmark for advancing field robotics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of SAR robotics and advocates using SAR applications as a realistic benchmark for field robotics research.

Findings

Overview of SAR robotic systems and components

Identification of SAR-specific demands on robotic systems

Proposed future research directions for SAR robotics

Abstract

Aim of this paper is to provide a review of the state of the art in Search and Rescue (SAR) robotics. Suitable robotic applications in the SAR domain are described, and SAR-specific demands and requirements on the various components of a robotic system are pictured. Current research and development in SAR robotics is outlined, and an overview of robotic systems and sub-systems currently in use in SAR and disaster response scenarios is given. Finally we show a number of possible research directions for SAR robots, which might change the overall design and operation of SAR robotics in the longer-term future. All this is meant to support our main idea of taking SAR applications as an applied benchmark for the Field Robotics (FR) domain.