Test Arenas and Performance Metrics for Urban Search and Rescue Robots

Published

October 31, 2003

Author(s)

Adam S. Jacoff, Elena R. Messina, Brian Weiss, S Tadokoro, Y Nakagawa

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the development and proliferation of robot test arenas that provide tangible, realistic, and challenging environments for mobile robot researchers interested in urban search and rescue applications and other unstructured environments. These arenas allow direct comparison of robotic approaches, objective performance evaluation, and can ultimately provide a proving ground for field-able robotic systems such as those used at the World Trade Center collapse. International robot competitions using these arenas require robots to negotiate complex and collapsed structures, find simulated victims, and generate human readable maps of the environment. A performance metric is presented which quantifies several pertinent robot capabilities and produces an overall score used to evaluate and compare robotic implementations. Future directions for the arenas and the competitions are also discussed.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Conference Dates

October 27-31, 2003

Conference Location

Las Vegas, NV, USA

Conference Title

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

autonomous mobile robots, collaboration, knowledge representation, mapping, Miscellaneous, Performance Metrics, Robotics & Intelligent Systems

Citation

Jacoff, A. , Messina, E. , Weiss, B. , Tadokoro, S. and Nakagawa, Y. (2003), Test Arenas and Performance Metrics for Urban Search and Rescue Robots, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Las Vegas, NV, USA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=822574 (Accessed October 24, 2025)