Experience in system design for human-robot teaming in urban search & rescue
Geert-Jan M. Kruijff, Miroslav Janíček, Shanker Keshavdas, Benoît Larochelle, Hendrik Zender, Nanja Smets, Tina Mioch, Mark Neerincx, Jurriaan van Diggelen, Francis Colas, Ming Liu, François Pomerleau, Roland Siegwart, Václav Hlaváč, Tomáš Svoboda, Tomas Petricek, Michal Reinstein, Karel Zimmermann, Fiora Pirri, Mario Gianni, Panagiotis Papadakis, Arnab Sinha, Patrick Balmer, Nicola Tomatis, Rainer Worst, Thorsten Linder, Hartmut Surmann, Varoslav Tretyakov, Salvatore Corrao, Sylvia Pratzler-Wanczura, Markus Sulk
Abstract
The paper describes experience with applying a user-centric design methodology in developing systems for human-robot teaming in Urban Search & Rescue. A human-robot team consists of several robots (rovers/UGVs, microcopter/UAVs), several humans at an off-site command post (mission commander, UGV operators) and one on-site human (UAV operator). This system has been developed in close cooperation with several rescue organizations, and has been deployed in a real-life tunnel accident use case. The human-robot team jointly explores an accident site, communicating using a multi-modal team interface, and spoken dialogue. The paper describes the development of this complex socio-technical system per se, as well as recent experience in evaluating the performance of this system.