NRI-Small: Mixed Human-Robot Teams for Search and Rescue

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

The project aims at increasing the ability to respond to large-scale disasters and manage emergencies by including robots and agents as teammates of humans in search and rescue teams. The project focuses on large teams of humans and robots that have only incomplete knowledge of the disaster situation while they accomplish the mission to rescue people and prevent fires. The methodology to achieve cooperation within the teams will be based on the development of mental models shared by team members. The shared mental models will facilitate the interactions among robots and humans by providing a suitable level of abstraction enabling them to share beliefs, desires, and intentions as they work to accomplish their tasks. The performance of teamwork models will be measured by comparing various task performance metrics (such as time to save people), system level metrics (such as computation time or message traffic), and amount of sharedness of the mental models. The experimental work will be conducted using the open source RoboCup Search and Rescue Simulator. Broader impacts include integration of research results in undergraduate courses, availability of the software produced as open source, outreach activities to expose K-12 students to research issues and to excite them about using computing methods for real-world problems. The long term objective is to improve preparadeness for emergency situations, which will help saving lives and minimizing loss of properties.