  The multidisciplinary nature of response robotics has brought about a
diversified research community with extended expertise. Motivated by the recent
accelerated rate of publications in the field, this paper analyzes the
technical content, statistics, and implications of the literature from
bibliometric standpoints. The aim is to study the global progress of response
robotics research and identify the contemporary trends. To that end, we
investigated the collaboration mapping together with the citation network to
formally recognize impactful and contributing authors, publications, sources,
institutions, funding agencies, and countries. We found how natural and
human-made disasters contributed to forming productive regional research
communities, while there are communities that only view response robotics as an
application of their research. Furthermore, through an extensive discussion on
the bibliometric results, we elucidated the philosophy behind research priority
shifts in response robotics and presented our deliberations on future research
directions.
