Urban search and rescue is inherently important and dangerous operation requiring a team of first responders to navigate a new dangerous terrain to locate and rescue survivors as effectively as possible. Robotic technology offers unique benefits in this scenario allowing to send in the robots to perform the search in the areas that might not be accessible or safe for humans. By interviewing Urban Search Rescue team about their needs and practices, we have derived requirement and opportunities for development of robotic technology to augment their practice. In this project we have collaborated with Archiact company, who developed the TeleSpider robot.
Stepanova, E. R., von der Heyde, M., Kitson, A., Schiphorst, T. & Riecke, B. E. Gathering and applying guidelines for mobile robot design for urban search and rescue application in International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2017), 562–581.