An overview of robotics and autonomous systems for harsh environments

Abstract

Abstract-Across a wide range of industries and applications, robotics and autonomous systems can fulfil the crucial and challenging tasks such as inspection, exploration, monitoring, drilling, sampling and mapping in areas of scientific discovery, disaster prevention, human rescue and infrastructure management, etc. However, in many situations, the associated environment is either too dangerous or inaccessible to humans. Hence, a wide range of robots have been developed and deployed to replace or aid humans in these activities. A look at these harsh environment applications of robotics demonstrate the diversity of technologies developed. This paper reviews some key application areas of robotics that involve interactions with harsh environments (such as search and rescue, space exploration, and deep-sea operations), gives an overview of the developed technologies and provides a discussion of the key trends and future directions common to many of these areas.

A Survey on Unmanned Surface Vehicles for Disaster Robotics: Main Challenges and Directions

“…Even though there are currently plenty of work focusing on robotics and DM [18], the presence of USVs [7,19] directly associated with DM seems to have fallen behind those of other platforms [8,9], such as UAVs [10] and UUVs [11,12]. For instance, Wong et al [20] address robotics and automation systems for harsh environments, but briefly discusses USVs with a generalist focus. The reference book from Murphy [18] is an important reference for disaster robotics, covering different unmanned systems, including USVs and UUVs where they were actually used.…”

Self-Explainable Robots in Remote Environments

“…Recent advancements have made robots and autonomous systems a valuable asset in unsafe environments as a way to keep humans out of danger, such as in the nuclear or energy domains [6,7,10,13,17,20]. These domains often require navigating highly dynamic scenarios and executing time-critical actions successfully.…”

Exploring Interaction with Remote Autonomous Systems using Conversational Agents

“…Remote autonomous systems and vehicles are increasingly being used to facilitate operations where it is either impossible or dangerous for humans to go. These systems may be deployed, for example, in the energy sector, search and rescue or military settings [31,47,63,71,79]. It is expected that, increasingly, these systems will have high levels of autonomy and operate in teams requiring only supervision by human operators [5,22].…”