Hazardous CBRNe environmental conditions pose a significant challenge to unmanned systems. They include extreme temperatures, open fire, explosions, fragment projectiles, potential structural collapse, as well as lack of oxygen, high concentrations of toxic industrial materials, and nuclear and radiological radiation. DOK-ING is leading the way in designing, building and reinforcing HERO robotic system.

Situational awareness for robots comes from fusing the information from a variety of sensors. Our system will be equipped with carefully calibrated sensors fusing various physical, chemical and biological information. This type of fusion will extend the sensing capabilities and provide situational awareness to the HERO system. 

In situations like CBRNe disasters, it is impossible to expect the autonomous system to execute the mission alone, without the help of human operators. If the system and the operator are to work together, they must share the situation awareness. This becomes increasingly challenging under intermittent communication with limited data transfer capabilities. To tacle this LARICS will develop a decentralized solution for heterogeneous multi-agent HERO systems.

SOPs should cover all aspects of the system's operation, from deployment to recovery. The operators must be familiar with the system's capabilities and limitations, as well as the SOPs for its operation. The training should be comprehensive and should include both theoretical and practical exercises. For example, the operators of a robot that is being deployed to search for survivors in a collapsed building would need to be trained on how to operate the robot, how to interpret the robot's sensors, and how to respond to different scenarios.