Flexible Disaster Response of Tomorrow -- Final Presentation and Evaluation of the CENTAURO System
This addresses disaster-response challenges for rescue forces, but it is incremental as it builds on existing mobile manipulation robot concepts.
The CENTAURO project developed a disaster-response system with the Centauro robot and control interfaces to support rescue forces by performing tasks from a safe distance, and a systematic evaluation demonstrated its capabilities and provided insights.
Mobile manipulation robots have high potential to support rescue forces in disaster-response missions. Despite the difficulties imposed by real-world scenarios, robots are promising to perform mission tasks from a safe distance. In the CENTAURO project, we developed a disaster-response system which consists of the highly flexible Centauro robot and suitable control interfaces including an immersive tele-presence suit and support-operator controls on different levels of autonomy. In this article, we give an overview of the final CENTAURO system. In particular, we explain several high-level design decisions and how those were derived from requirements and extensive experience of Kerntechnische Hilfsdienst GmbH, Karlsruhe, Germany (KHG). We focus on components which were recently integrated and report about a systematic evaluation which demonstrated system capabilities and revealed valuable insights.