Tele-presence methods supporting cooperation of robots and humans

Telepresence methods provide interesting approaches to support cooperation between mobile robots and humans in the context of search and rescue activities. Departing from the requirements analyses from emergency support organizations by questionnaires, a system design is presented incorporating tele-operators and local rescue teams, composed of robots and humans. The design of the information flow between these different units, as well as the robot/human user interface is discussed. In particular the role of localization methods to integrate all data into a homogeneous information context on basis of a map and localization methods is emphasized. The test scenarios to demonstrate the capabilities of the integrated system and the achieved results are summarized.