Highlights on some Robots and Drones for Hazardous Environments

Robots and drones are useful devices where operations are expensive, tedious, or dangerous for humans. Recently the decrease of cost of robotic devices has extended the range of applications of robotic systems particularly in hazardous environments. The cooperation between drones and robots can give further possibilities and opens new challenges. In this work some environments and scenarios where robots and drones and their cooperation could be effective, are shortly reviewed and commented. In particular, four different situations are described with experimental results: the exploration of active volcanic environments, the search of mines for humanitarian demining, the radioactive waste inspections and the assessment on terrains with high landslide risk. Finally, some conclusions and perspectives for future applications conclude the paper.