Robots in Crisis Management: A Survey

Abstract

Robots are flexible intelligent machines designed to replace human operators in dangerous, dirty, and dull tasks. Therefore, an apparent application of robotics is to provide assistance in managing critical situations, by carrying out tasks that might be harmful for us. Indeed, almost any police corps around the globe is nowadays equipped with a a counter improvise explosive device (IED) robot. Although counter-IED robots constitute the most famous robots for crisis management, they formulate just one of the areas that robots can be used for. An abundance of research has been performed through the last ten years in safety, security and rescue robotics. This paper attempts to review the efforts reported so far. Moreover, it attempts to systemize the robots for crisis management, in the sense that it categorizes them according to the specific use and examines which architecture would be most suitable for each case.