IoT-based task recognition for process assistance in human-robot disaster response

Mobile robots like drones or ground vehicles can be a valuable addition to emergency response teams, because they reduce the risk and the burden for human team members. However, the need to manage and coordinate human-robot team operations during ongoing missions adds an additional dimension to an already complex and stressful situation. BPM approaches can help to visualize and document the disaster response processes underlying a mission. In this paper, we show how data from a ground robot’s reconnaissance run can be used to provide process assistance to the officers. By automatically recognizing executed activities and structuring them as an ad-hoc process instance, we are able to document the executed process and provide real-time information about the mission status. The resulting mission progress process model can be used for additional services, such as officer training or mission documentation. Our approach is implemented as a prototype and demonstrated using data from an ongoing research project on rescue robotics.