A study on risk assessment for improving reliability of rescue robots

Not only the performance is important for robot development, but also its reliability is another important perspective needed to realize robots in the real field applications. Rescue robot is one the extreme case for robot development. The rescue robot works with human operators and rescue responders in rescue missions occurred under some special situations, such as, collapsed building from earthquake. Under the circumstance with limited time, highly complex pathway and unexpected terrain, the rescue robot requires zeroed error in its operations; therefore, the reliability is the most important issue. Our study on risk assessment aims to improve the reliability of rescue robot in its development by considering separately for each subsection in the robot, then, combine them together. The results help improving our research and development on rescue robots significantly.