Rescue robotics — a crucial milestone on the road to autonomous systems

In this article we argue that rescue robotics is an important steppingstone in the scientific challenge to create autonomous systems. We motivate why we believe that there is a significant market for rescue robots, which has unique features that allow a fruitful combination of application oriented developments and basic research. Based on several application examples, for example the estimate that about 2000 road accidents per year in Germany alone involve hazardous goods, we conclude that there is a tremendous need for rescue robots. Unlike other markets for advanced robotics systems like service robots, the rescue robotics domain benefits from the fact that there is a human in the loop, which allows a stepwise transition from dumb teleoperated devices to truly autonomous systems. Current teleoperated devices are already very useful in this domain and they benefit from any bit of autonomy added as human rescue workers are a scarce resource at disaster scenarios and a single operator should ideally supervise a multitude of robots. We present results from the rescue robots and the International University Bremen (IUB) in a core area regarding autonomy, namely mapping.