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Mining accidents have occurred since the early days of mining. Therewere a total of 525 mining disasters (incidents with five or more fatalities) in both coal and metal/nonmetal mines from 1900 through 2007 in the United States, resulting in 12,823 fatalities. Most of these disasters involve mine rescue teams, which are specially trained to perform search and rescue operations in extremely hostile environments. Robots have a great potential to assist in these underground operations, searching ahead of rescue teams and reporting conditions that may be hazardous to the teams. When explosive conditions exist or when heavy smoke or unstable ground conditions prevent team members from entering a mine, robots can become an invaluable tool.

This article explores teleoperation for remote presence applications from a human-robot interaction (HRI) perspective to create a model that captures the key elements of the system and projects the impact of ever-increasing advances in autonomy and communications connectivity. Remote presence applications are those where one or more humans use the robot to project themselves into an environment to complete a time-critical mission. In these applications, there is some compelling need to have human perception at a distance. For example, the environment may be unsafe or unreachable, such as encountered when searching for survivors in the aftermath of a disaster, or the situation is novel and perceptually unconstrained, as in noticing a hidden terrorist during a hostage situation. Remote presence applications are characterized by "the observers won't know what needs to be seen until they see it" flavor and the need to see that critical "what needs to be seen" in as near real time as possible. This means that remote presence applications are inherently teleoperated; the human is an active element in the control loop, and there is no benefit to full autonomy. The question becomes how to transfer the advances in autonomy and communications to enable the human-robot enterprise to successfully and reliably complete its mission.

On September 11, 2001, the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) responded within six hours to the World Trade Center (WTC) disaster; this is the first known use of robots for urban search and rescue (USAR). The University of South Florida (USF) was one of the four robot teams, and the only academic institution represented. The USF team participated onsite in the search efforts from 12-21 September 2001, collecting and archiving data on the use of all robots, in addition to actively fielding robots. This article provides an overview of the use of robots for USAR, concentrating on what robots were actually used and why. It describes the roles that the robots played in the response and the impact of the physical environment on the platforms. The quantitative and qualitative performance of the robots are summarized in terms of their components (mobility, sensors, control, communications, and power) and within the larger human-robot system. Lessons learned are offered and a synopsis of the current state of rescue robotics and activities at the CRASAR concludes the article.

The Robot World Cup Initiative (RoboCup) is an international research and education initiative. It was started in order to foster artificial intelligence search. RoboCupRescue's domain is search and rescue operations in urban disasters. The RoboCup Rescue league consists of two projects: the simulation project and the robotics and infrastructure project. A multi-agent-based approach to disaster simulation provides many research themes and supports rescue operations in real situations. Simulation Project, not only agent implementation, but also the evaluation of the social agents' performance, the architecture of the distribution system, and the quality of communications, etc. The following features are important in this project to promote the research and provide verification methods.

Robot competitions enhance search and rescue technology while raising awareness and attracting funds. Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) is a branch of rescue that concentrates on victim detection and removal from man-made structures, such as collapsed buildings after an earthquake. This is in contrast to the other branch of rescue, wilderness rescue, that concerns people lost in open spaces. Recent advances in robotics platforms and intelligent software, combined with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in the United earthquake in Japan, followed by earthquakes in Taiwan and Turkey, have led to a growing international USAR robotics community.