IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2018 - 10

constraints, as demonstrated by the DARPA Robotics Challenge held in 2015. The FP7 European project WALKMAN [26] is focused on developing a humanoid robot that
can address several of the aforementioned challenges that
may arise in a disaster. In this project, we collaborate with
the Protezione Civile Città Metropolitana di Firenze, Italy,
to identify the requirements and application technologies
for a humanoid robot that needs to take part in an intervention, such as after an earthquake.
This article presents a use case for humanoid robots in
postearthquake scenarios as avatars for remote inspection,
damage assessment, and object retrieval. We discuss the
mission specifications coming from Protezione Civile Città
Metropolitana di Firenze operators, present the system
setup and a novel, intuitive, and immersive teleoperation
interface designed to address this challenge, and report on
the results of the on-site testing. This article focuses on the
modifications and development of new components to
address the challenges posed by very specific postearthquake scenarios. A detailed description of the WALKMAN hardware and software architecture can be found
elsewhere [10].
Given the critical aspects of a rescue task compared to the
stability and time constraints of a robotic system, it is still
unrealistic to approach the first phase of intervention. Hence,
our work has been devoted to field testing of the perception
and manipulation capabilities required to tackle the operations related to the second phase, as described previously. For
this scope, we developed
a robotic platform based
on the WALK-MAN robot
In the past few years, the
technology, which consists of a wheeled base
high number of disasters
and a humanoid upper
body. In this way, both
has raised attention for
perception and manipulation tasks can take place
the development and
during the operation. Its
deployment of search-and- compliant arms, with underactuated end-effectors,
provide a sturdy hardware
rescue robotic platforms
for adaptive and powerful
manipulation. At the same
in disaster scenarios.
time, its perception capabilities, together with the
teleoperation interfaces for vision and bimanual manipulation, provide the pilot with a set of tools for remote building
assessment. Thanks to the introduced platform, the operators can remotely assess the building damage level through
the evaluation table of the standard postearthquake form
[11], and it may be possible for the data collected to be streamed to a remote consulting engineering firm to perform a
deeper analysis of the structural integrity of the building by
postprocessing the data.
The wheeled base has been designed to focus on the
assessment activities with a teleoperated robot, reducing the
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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

september 2018

complexity of the system with respect to teleoperated control
of legged locomotion. In the article, we present a description
of the hardware platform, the software control architecture,
the teleoperation interface that was used to complete several
dexterous tasks, and the results of the building inspection.
The system effectiveness was demonstrated both in the laboratory and during several field tests (for video footage of the
robot deployment on site at Amatrice, see [27]). Finally, we
report end-user feedback that was collected from the experts
of Protezione Civile Città Metropolitana di Firenze and the
Amatrice municipality during the field tests.
Mission Objectives and Requirements
Thanks to the support of the Italian Protezione Civile Città
Metropolitana di Firenze, real field testing was organized in
Amatrice in one of the buildings affected by the earthquake
[Figure 2(a)]. The focus of the field activity was to evaluate
the feasibility of the following tasks:
● building a 3-D map of the house interior status
● measuring the building structural damages
● recovering some objects from the house
● installing monitoring systems and sensors inside the damaged building.
As for the last point, the technical experts involved suggested the use of the robot to place indoor wall position sensors
that monitor building movement and to equip the robot
with additional sensors, such as a multigas detector or thermal camera.
Figure 2(b) shows an overview of the inspected four-room
house, which includes several connecting doors. Two indoor
mission targets were a priori defined: an object to be retrieved
in spot A and a door to be opened in spot B. To complete the
tasks, we plotted a mission plan [Figure 2(b)] to find a path
for 1) reaching the mission targets, and 2) reaching suitable
locations to perform a room scan. A possible path is shown
by the dotted line, whose action feasibility was verified every
time online by the robot operators.
During the robotic field tests, a group of technical experts
were close to the pilot station to perform the building evaluation remotely through the robotic platform. The building
assessment is normally done by filling out a suitable technical
form following the postearthquake procedures [11]. Figure 2(c) shows excerpts of the forms that the technical team
has to fill out for each inspected building. Such forms are
meant for a fast and qualitative evaluation of the building
structural conditions [i.e., Figure 2(c) section 4 lists very
heavy, medium, and light damage]. The information to report
is essential and strongly oriented toward short-term countermeasures [e.g., the right part of the table in Figure 2(c) sections 4-6], which are evaluated based on the experience of the
operator and supported by the measurements that can be
taken on the field (i.e., measurement tape). The analysis of
these forms provides very useful guidelines to develop specifications for the robotic mission. Accordingly, our aim was to
provide the operator with an appropriate sensory feedback as
he or she was personally inspecting the building, together

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2018

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