Usability and Portability Lessons Learned from the 2003 AAAI Robot Rescue Competition

Contents

In order to realize the broad use of robotic systems in hazardous environments, shortcomings in robot interfaces, control system configurability, and overall usability must be addressed. A concerted effort was made to build a foundation of well-engineered communication, perception and autonomous behavior that is robust to changing, unstructured environments and which can be reused across different robot geometries and sensors. During the 2003Robot Rescue competition held in Acapulco as part of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Fifteenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, the INEEL demonstrated a high level of success in the areas of human-robot interaction, dynamic sensor configuration, and code portability. This paper will focus on lessons learned with respect to human-robot interface usability and robotic control architecture dynamic configuration and portability.