Search-and-Rescue Robotics

Search-and-rescue robotics studies how aerial, ground, aquatic, and soft robots can search disaster sites, locate people, and support tasks such as inspection, evacuation, or vital-sign measurement. Systems combine visual, depth, acoustic, and radio sensing with mapping and planning methods such as frontier exploration, informative path planning, and multi-robot task allocation. Researchers also use language-guided models, learned policies, and human-robot interaction to adapt robot behavior and coordinate teams in changing environments. A central challenge is making these systems reliable and safe beyond controlled tests, where clutter, hazards, limited communication, unfamiliar terrain, and failures in spatial memory can undermine efficient search.