A Novel Telerobotic Search System using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Due to the agile mobility of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), UAVs become potential robotic platforms for search and rescue applications. Since making a decision (e.g., identify victims or termination of a mission) in search and rescue missions is difficult, most of robotic search and rescue systems rely on teleoperation. This research proposes a novel telerobotic search system consisting of a monitor, joystick and eye tracker and drone with a RGBD camera. The experiments demonstrate that (1) human pilots can search for victims efficiently; and (2) the collected data is the rosbag format, which can be further used for analyzing humans' search behavior and gaze data.