  Aim of this paper is to provide a review of the state of the art in Search
and Rescue (SAR) robotics. Suitable robotic applications in the SAR domain are
described, and SAR-specific demands and requirements on the various components
of a robotic system are pictured. Current research and development in SAR
robotics is outlined, and an overview of robotic systems and sub-systems
currently in use in SAR and disaster response scenarios is given. Finally we
show a number of possible research directions for SAR robots, which might
change the overall design and operation of SAR robotics in the longer-term
future. All this is meant to support our main idea of taking SAR applications
as an applied benchmark for the Field Robotics (FR) domain.
