# Improving Human-Robot Teamwork in Urban Search and Rescue Through Episodic Memory of Prior Collaboration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.18836 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18836/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Modeling Relational Data with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06103/) (2017)
- [Efficient Lifelong Learning with A-GEM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00420/) (2018)
- [Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02320/) (2020)
- [Neural Episodic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01988/) (2017)
- [Real-World Human-Robot Collaborative Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01156/) (2020)
- [A Machine with Short-Term, Episodic, and Semantic Memory Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02098/) (2022)
- [Temporal Knowledge-Graph Memory in a Partially Observable Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05861/) (2024)
- [A Machine With Human-Like Memory Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01611/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Effective human-robot teamwork requires robots to adapt to partners, situations, and task dynamics from the start of an interaction. In the MATRX Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) environment, people can externalize collaboration patterns (CPs) they discover during teamwork through a chat and reflection interface. We study whether a robot can use such prior team experience to become a better teammate in future interactions. To this end, we represent historical CPs as knowledge-graph episodic memories and use graph representation learning with a node-classification objective to identify a representative and effective memory for reuse. We then initialize the robot with this memory before a new collaboration episode begins. Across 20 participants and 160 round-level observations, initializing the robot with a single automatically selected prior CP increases rescue success from 25.7% to 41.3% and reduces average task time by 283 seconds. The strongest gains appear at the beginning of interaction, suggesting that reusable episodic memory can help robots enter collaboration with more effective task knowledge and support smoother early teamwork.