Shared Autonomy for Robotic Manipulation in Explosive Ordnance Disposal: Insights from the GENIUS Project

Explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) is among the most extreme environments for robotic manipulation: Explosive objects are adversarial by design, a single grasp failure can be fatal, and operators work under degraded communication, severe time pressure and in uncertain terrains. This extended abstract presents the manipulation challenges arising from the GENIUS project, a European Defence Fund initiative deploying heterogeneous unmanned platforms for neutralizing landmines, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and Unex- ploded Ordnance (UXO). We argue that shared control, blending autonomous manipulation capabilities with human control inputs and oversight, is the key enabler for effective robotic manipulation in this extreme domain. We outline a domain-grounded graduated shared autonomy architecture, mapping operator-identified EOD task classes to three autonomy levels, and describe the mobile dual-arm manipulation platform under development that will be used for validation.