Workshop on Robotics in Challenging and Hazardous Environments

In recent years, much progress has been made in the area of developing robotic systems for challenging and dangerous environments. Examples of such environments include rough terrain, air, water, space, planetary surfaces, surveillance and unstable or dynamic environments (for example, mines, search and rescue, hazardous cleanup). These environments present serious issues for research in autonomy, mobility, manipulation, sensing, hardware, computing, and electronics. Although humans are superior to robots due to their ability to think critically, their resilience in the face of unexpected situations, and their adaptation to new scenarios, it may be dangerous or impractical to send humans into these environments. As such, it is frequently more feasible to advance robot technology than to send humans. In other cases, when a human presence is necessary, it may significantly reduce risk to humans by developing a robotic system to serve cooperatively with humans. With or without a direct human presence, human assistance in these challenging environments is limited or impossible due to distance or the need for quick response to unknown or changing circumstances. This leads to high performance requirements and additional constraints on the physical hardware and software systems – which are still unsolved research areas. Technologies that are developed for particular hazardous or challenging environments may often be equally suited for analogous environments. To understand current problems, in-development solutions, and potential methods that arise during operations in these challenging environments, this workshop will bring together researchers involved o