Dr. Robin R. Murphy

I am a founder of the field of rescue robotics; my personal goal is to enable emergency responders to routinely save lives through physically situated artificial intelligence (robots, sensor networks, etc.). This has led to a research career based on three principles: basic research should be informed by field experiences and working with users, meaningful solutions require teams of multi-disciplinary researchers addressing solutions within the ecology of the domain, and industry-agency-university linkages must be established in order to accelerate the diffusion of innovation.

Through the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, I have introduced ground, air, and sea robots to disaster response, participating in the World Trade Center disaster (2001), La Conchita, CA, mudslides (2005), Hurricanes Charley (2004), Dennis (2005), Katrina (2005), and Wilma (2005), the Newmont Midas (2007) and Crandall Canyon (2007) mine disasters, and the Berkman Plaza II parking garage collapse (2007) and subsequent forensic structural investigation (2008). As fieldwork made it clear to me that the lack of understanding the relationship between humans, robots, and domains was the major stumbling block in diffusing these innovations to disaster management, my basic research turned to human-robot interaction where I have produced a series of seminal papers, often in collaboration with a former graduate student from psychology, Dr. Jenny Burke.

In 2002, I founded the Institute for Safety Security Rescue Technology at USF, a state of Florida Type II center, in order to facilitate multi-disciplinary teams in computer science, health systems, networks, psychology, and sensors. To enable the transfer of research to industry and the emergency response community, I established in 2003, in partnership with the University of Minnesota, the NSF Industry University Cooperative Research Center on safety, security, and rescue technology.

While active in the robotics professional societies and in serving on defense and National Academies studies, I teach and advise students and have written the best-selling textbook, Introduction to AI Robotics (MIT Press, 2000), and am preparing a second edition. Dr. Burke, Prof. David Woods (Ohio State), and I have just signed a contract with MIT Press for Human-Robot Interaction, the rst textbook on the subject.