Teleoperation for Urban Search and Rescue Applications

Abstract

An important application of field robotics research is robotic assistance for search and rescue operations. The problem of robotic search and rescue requires techniques to map, navigate, and search unknown complex environments. In subterranean domains such as tunnels, caves, and underground urban environments these activities are made more difficult due to communication constraints and unavailability of global positioning systems. We present here Coordinated Robotics participation in the Urban Circuit of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean Challenge which addresses these problems in the underground urban environment. Our Teleoperation strategy serves as a baseline approach by which to compare autonomous solutions. Our aim is to provide insight into our system design and our lessons learned from the competition.