Details

This book acts as a guide to the theory and practice of disaster robotics. It can serve as an introduction for researchers and technologists, a reference for emergency managers, and a textbook in field robotics. After an overview of rescue robotics in the context of emergency informatics, it provides a chronological summary and formal analysis of the thirty-four documented deployments of robots to disasters that include the 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and numerous mining accidents. It then examines disaster robotics in the typical robot modalities of ground, air, and marine, addressing topics of: robot types, missions and tasks, and selection heuristics for each modality. The book also discusses types of fieldwork, providing advice on matters that include collecting data and collaborating with emergency professionals.