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Rescue Robotics presents the major findings of the DDT Project on robots and systems for urban search and rescue. The book discusses the development and testing of these robotic systems, and technologies including serpentine robots and traced vehicles.

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Rescue Robotics presents the most significant findings of the DDT Project on robots and systems for urban search and rescue. This project was launched by the Japanese government in 2002 with the aim of applying a wide variety of robotics technologies to find a solution to the problem of disaster response, especially urban search and rescue in large-scale earthquakes.

From 2002 to 2007 more than 100 researchers took part in the DDT Project, coming from a wide spectrum of research and development to make up four research groups: Aerial Robot Systems MU (Mission Unit), Information Infrastructure System MU, In-Rubble Robot System MU, and On-Rubble Robot System MU. This book discusses their development and testing of various robotic systems and technologies such as serpentine robots, traced vehicles, intelligent human interface and data processing, as well as analysing and verifying the results of these experiments.

Rescue Robotics will be of interest to researchers and students, but will also prove useful for emergency response personnel. It offers an insight into the state of the art of rescue robotics and its readers will benefit from a knowledge of the advanced technologies involved in this field.

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Earthquake Disaster and Expectation for Robotics.- An Overview of DDT Project.- Disaster Information Gathering Aerial Robot Systems.- Information Infrastructure for Rescue Systems.- In-rubble Robot System for USAR under Debris.- On-rubble Robot System in DDT Project.- Design Guidelines for Human Interface for Rescue Robots.- Information Sharing and Integration Framework among Rescue Robots/Information Systems.- Demonstrative Experiments on Rescue Search Robots and On-scenario Training in Practical Field with First Responders.- Summary of DDT Project, Unsolved Problems, and Future Roadmap.

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Professor Satoshi Tadokoro currently works for the Graduate School of Information Sciences at Tohoku University, Japan. His areas of research include intelligent mechanics/mechanical systems; perception information processing/intelligent robotics and; design engineering and machine functional elements/tribology.

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