The use of robots in harsh and unstructured field applications

Abstract

Robots have a potential to be a significant aid in high risk, unstructured and stressing situations such as experienced by police, fire brigade, rescue workers and military. In this project we have explored the abilities of today's robot technology in the mentioned fields. This was done by, studying the user, identifying scenarios where a robot could be used and implementing a robot system for these cases. We have concluded that highly portable field robots are emerging to be an available technology but that the human-robot interaction is currently a major limiting factor of today's systems. Further we have found that operational protocols, stating how to use the robots, have to be designed in order to make robots an effective tool in harsh and unstructured field environments.