TRADR: Long-Term Human-Robot Teaming for Robot-Assisted Disaster Response

A presentation of the TRADR project and a life demonstration of the TRADR system took place as part of the Public Program accompanying the European Robotics League – Emergency competition taking place on September 15-23 2017 in Piombino, Italy. The ERL Emergency is a civilian, outdoor robotics competition, with a focus on realistic, multi-domain emergency response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the ERL Emergency Grand Challenge can only be overcome when land, underwater and flying robots successfully cooperate. A public event late night on Sunday September 17 featured three EU-funded projects in the area of emergency response: Walk-Man, Sherpa and TRADR. The TRADR coordinator Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova (DFKI MLT) together with Emanuele Gissi, a Fire Officer of the Italian Firecorps (Vigili del Fuoco) delivered a presentation about the scientific results of TRADR and the TRADR deployment in Amatrice after the devastating earthquake of August 2016. Luigi Freda (La Sapienza University, Rome) demonstrated two TRADR ground robots in action in autonomous multi-robot patrolling. The event was attended among others by Mady Delvaux, Member of the European Parliament,   Anne Bajart from the EC,   Alan Winfield from University of the West of England and the ERL Emergency Coordinator, Reinhard Lafrenz, Secretary General of euRobotics AISBL. The TRADR presentation and demonstration were a great success that draw the attention of a big audience despite the late night hour.