Objectives

 

To this end, brief white-papers are solicited from concerned researchers in the US and South Korea to identify fundamental enabling technologies needed to overcome deficiencies and brittleness of current robotic systems. Authors of selected white-papers will be invited to an organizational workshop for presentations and open discussions. In collaboration with workshop participants, we intend to produce a short integrative report summarizing current issues and proposed research approaches, including a prioritized list of fundamental enabling technologies necessary for further development. The report and list of priorities will form the basis for developing a jointly funded program for US-Korea/Korea-US collaborative research projects sponsored by DoD/US and MOTIE/Korea, starting 2016~2017.

 

Topics of Interest

 

The research topics of interest for the white-papers include, but not limited to:

• Surveillance and reconnaissance for disaster prevention and early detection

• Perception and modeling for improved situational awareness

• Search and rescue support for post-disaster and emergency relief operations

• Sliding autonomy for operator control and human-robot interaction

• Rapid delivery of life-saving supplies and equipment to victims

• Evacuation assistance from remote locations

 

 

Focus on Fundamental Research

 

Since the workshop aims at identifying critical technological breakthroughs needed to bridge existing gaps between current systems and the demanding realities at disaster sites, we emphasize that the proposed approaches should address key fundamental issues; examples of potential research themes may include but are not limited to the following:

 

• In-situ adaptability to wide environmental variations in terms of morphology, mobility, perception, manipulation, decision-making, and interaction with relief workers, including self-repair and reconfiguration.

• Expanded capacity of intelligence and autonomy to be shared with operators, including shared perception and understanding as well as collaborative teamwork with human operators.

• Advances in perception, information management, reasoning and understanding, as well as in the dexterity of mobility and manipulation for integrated contextual decision-making and decision-support.

• Ensuring on-site robustness and adaptability in terms of tools, sensor suites, methodologies and platforms with enhanced rapidity, responsiveness, efficiency and ease of use.