Proposal of inspection and rescue tasks for tunnel disasters — Task development of Japan virtual robotics challenge

For aging social infrastructure, robot technology is effective for the inspection and maintenance. Such capabilities are similar to those required in the disaster response robots. The application of response robot technology to frequently-used maintenance robots for infrastructure accelerate the social implementation of the response robots. In the paper, the concept and outlines of Japan Virtual Robotics Challenge (JVRC) task development have been introduced, in which ordinal inspection tasks and disaster response tasks of tunnel are carried out by an identical robot. In the paper, we propose a test scenario for robotic operations for inspection and rescue tasks. The tasks will be checked in Japan Virtual Robotics Challenge that will be held in October 2015.