This site contains information for the sensors working group members.

The work item for sensors is defined within ASTM as:

This test method addresses the requirements for maneuvering the robot, identifying objects, and potentially performing detailed inspection. The scope encompasses the entire system, including the communications and the display, and possibly multiple cameras. This standard will be closely coordinated with the efforts of the communications working group within the urban search and rescue robots task group. No such standard exists.

The leader of the sensors working group is John Evans (contact).

Visual Acuity Standards Report

The test methods under development for the sensors on US&R robots are based on existing visual acuity standards.   A report providing a good overview of existing standards and rationale is available here. 

Visual acuity data collected from representative Wave 1 robot platforms

Manufacturers of robots that fall into the three higher-priority robot categories (peek-bot, wide-area ground survey, and aerial survey/loiter) were asked to provide sample video or images of the targets for the proposed visual acuity test method.    For descriptions of the robot categories and more background information on performance requirements, please see the preliminary report available on this web site.  This data is intended to provide working group and committee members with a sense of what is currently available,  as well as to calibrate them to what a particular visual acuity measure corresponds to in the real world.  In other words,  match mission requirements (situational awareness of roads and possible victims) with quantitative measures of visual acuity and field of view.   Please remember that the camera systems currently on the robots were not necessarily designed to support this visual acuity test or the US&R application domain.  

For the data collection, standard "tumbling E's" eye charts and hazardous materials placards were distributed to robot manufacturers.  They were asked to place the charts and placards at specified standoff distances and capture the images through the entire system (onboard robot camera, communications link to operator control unit, monitor on the operator control unit).   Where possible, cameras with different fields of view were used.

See the following links for the visual acuity results by robot category:

Aerial survey/loiter robot

Peekbot

Wide Area Ground Survey Robot