The National Centre of Competence in Research Robotic is currently conducting an intensive research about state-of-the-art robots in the are of search-and-respond operations.
State-of-the-art robotics in disaster response is still limited, it is expected to grow quickly in the future. However, more work is needed from the research community to overcome some key barriers to adoption.
“Although previous surveys were only a few years old, the rapid pace of development in robotics research and robotic deployment in search and rescue means that the state-of-the-art is already very different than these earlier assessments” says Jeff Delmerico, first author of the paper and formerly a NCCR Robotics member in Davide Scaramuzza’s Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich. “More importantly, rather than just documenting the current state of the research, or the history of robot deployments after real-world disasters, we were trying to analyze what is missing from the output of the research community in order to target real-world needs and provide the maximum benefit to actual rescuers”
The researchers are frank about the reality that rescue robotics still have a lot to go and would need a lot of help from different industries and organizations especially from the academe. The goal is to have search and rescue robots that will lessen the on-ground operational risks of rescue workers.