Overview of Search and Rescue from Robotics to Wireless Sensors and Robots Networks

In the recent years, many researchers have shown interest in developing search and rescue system composed of one or multiple robots, which have the mission of finding victims and identifying the potential hazards. To enhance the robotic systems there is a growing trend of integrating wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to robots and multi-robot systems, which gives more awareness of the environments. In the first part of this article, the authors present a review of robotic system and their environments in search and rescue systems. Additionally, they explain challenges related to these systems and tasks that a robot or a multi-robot system should execute to fulfil the search and rescue activities. As a second part, the authors expose the system that integrates WSNs with robots and the advantages that brings this latter. In addition, they cite tasks and missions that are achieved in a better way with a cooperation of WSN and robots. Furthermore, the authors expose and discuss the remarkable research, challenges and the open research challenges that includes this cooperation.