Human-Robot Teaming in Urban Search and Rescue

Abstract

Although current urban search and rescue (USAR) robots are little more than remotely controlled cameras, the end goal is for them to work alongside humans as trusted teammates. Natural language communications and performance data are collected as a team of humans works to carry out a simulated search and rescue task in an uncertain virtual environment. Conditions are tested emulating a remotely controlled robot versus an intelligent one. Differences in performance, situation awareness (SA), trust, and workload are measured. The Intelligent robot condition resulted in higher levels of performance and operator SA.