Experiences in Deploying Test Arenas for Autonomous Mobile Robots

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has created a set of reference test arenas for evaluating the performance of mobile autonomous robots performing urban search and rescue tasks. The arenas are intended to help accelerate the robotic research community's advancement of mobile robot capabilities. The arenas have been deployed in two competitions thus far and are also being used by researchers to test their systems' capabilities. We describe the arenas, their use in competitions and our near-term and long-term plans for the arenas.