Category: Director’s Blog

Chilean miners… update

It looks like the Chilean miners are close to be extricated! Great news and I wish I could be there, not only to cheer but also to learn more about how survivors communicate with “those above.” CRASAR was contacted about assisting with the search for the trapped miners, but the demands were even more extreme for a robot than at the Crandall Canyon, Utah, mine collapse so there was nothing workable. Fortunately the miners were found! Though with a long extrication time (months).

Cliff Nass, our partner at Stanford on the Survivor Buddy project, and I had always thought of victim management in terms of days, not weeks and months! We were hoping to actually go down to the rescue. We have been working on the topic of how trapped survivors can use social media communicate with responders and families and be less stressed for over 3 years. Cliff is a world expert in media– how people work with and through computers, television, radio, etc. – and so Cliff and I joined forces with funding from the National Science Foundation and Microsoft External Research to consider how trapped survivors, elders and shut-ins, etc. will use multi-media devices such as a robot ) that finds them or other media (ipods, tvs, videoconference). Dr. Cindy Bethel’s PhD thesis found that the way a robot is regularly used to investigate rubble and people is… well, creepy. Creepy to the point of causing measurable physiological stress.

Cliff and I offered our services to the Ministry through the National Science Foundation, though it sounded like the situation was well under control, and requested that we be allowed to collect data on how the miners are using media to communication, entertain themselves, etc., and what’s working/not working. For example, a news report said that the miners requested individual ipods but were denied so that they would stay together- that is certainly interesting to us, because it’s consistent with the miners trapped in the Beaconsfield mine and that everyone wants multi-media versus just talking to someone.  We wanted to see if we could get access to the “data stream” (or even make sure the data needed for social media research is collected), logbooks, or the response/support team- if only remotely as this data is vital to systems that would improve telemedicine or any situation where someone is isolated for long periods of time. Our focus on media (how) complements the psychological support to the miners and families (what and why)- which NASA helped advise them on.

We’ve just learned that after over a month of requests and processing, our request has been turned down. We’re trying to find avenues through local Chilean researchers (who have been terrific) and NASA to get access to the data through them– while there isn’t anything we can do for the miners, we believe there is valuable research and lessons to be learned for “the next time.”

Chile Mine Disaster, Trapped Victims, and Survivor Buddy

CRASAR was contacted shortly after the Chiliean mine collapse that left 33 miners unaccounted for. The situation was quite similar to the Crandall Canyon Utah mine disaster in 2007 that we assisted the Mine Safety and Health Administration on– however the major difference was that the inner diameter of the borehole was much smaller- on the order of 3.5 inches, whereas at Crandall Canyon we had closer to 9 inches. 9 inches is currently the smallest we can get robots that are waterproof and able to function when they land in the pile of mud from the drilling,such as the one built by Inuktun and operated by Pipe Eye International. As we worked to see if we could do better, the miners were miraculously found alive- so the search and rescue robot wasn’t needed.

But now the question is how to keep the trapped miners comfortable and unstressed as they wait for extraction. The has been a topic of research that we are conducting with Prof. Cliff Nass at Stanford University, a world leader in how people communicate through media (such as computers or robots), since 2007. We call the project “Survivor Buddy” – building a robot multi-media “head” that wasn’t creepy. We were originally funded by Microsoft (thanks!) and since 2009 by the National Science Foundation (thanks, too!). The original version of Survivor Buddy was cited by Popular Science as a “Best of 2009” and we have just completed a much lighter, more agile version seen in these YouTube clips here and here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVB_mgW2D8g[/youtube]  [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1E6SQVNb4I[/youtube]

We’ve requested permission to come to Chile and observe, now that things have settled down (they didn’t need MORE people on-site right after they found the miners). This is quite the opportunity to learn how trapped victims react… and perhaps some of the lessons Cliff and I and our great grad students (especially the newly graduated Dr. Victoria Groom) have learned can be of some help.

NJ-TF1 and New Jersey UASI teams used robots at Hackensack collapse!

On July 16, 2010, a parking garage at a condo building collapsed, with at least one person thought to be trapped. New Jersey Task Force 1 and another New Jersey UASI team responded with robots! NJ-TF1 (the only US&R team in the US that I’m aware of that owns rescue robots ) used their Inuktun Extreme to search the rubble- and there were no victims. NJ-TF1 became early adopters after the World Trade Center. Jim Bastan- and all of NJ-TF1- has been a great advocate for rescue robots. They’ve hosted two CRASAR events, one in 2005 that gave some of the ground robots in our cache their first taste of snow.

It’s great to hear that robots are being adopted and used!

Uganda bombing

Woke up this morning to see the death toll in Uganda is up to 74 according to CNN. Terrorism is particularly ugly because it severely reduces the time responders have to get to someone before they die and creates a different set of challenges. Surviving a building collapse is easier– if you don’t die right away, and you are a surface victim or within 20 feet of the surface of rubble, the odds are in your favor that rescuers will be able to find you in time. But an explosion… the victims nearest the blast are killed instantly, the ones trapped within 20 feet are badly burned and require immediately assistance to survive. And the people beyond 20 feet in the interior, well, that’s where having robots can help by going farther than existing technologies.

I can’t tell from the pictures but it seems like the explosions were in relatively low occupancy structures versus big high rises, so there may not be tons of rubble to sort through- the local responders with existing tools can get in and get to the survivors.

Let’s hope so. The horror and senselessness of it all is hard to bear and our prayers go out the victims and their families.

Hurricane Alex

What a relief that Hurricane Alex was relatively minor, what I heard a resident on the news call “a normal one.” The two types of robots that fit these types of disasters are unmanned aerial vehicles and marine vehicles. A hurricane is a geographically distributed event- lots of homes demolished but commercial structures are evacuated and generally still standing. So rapid recon of large areas is important: UAVs help assess what areas are hurt, where people are gathering, and routes in and out of the area. National Guard Predators can get the broadest view and have been used since Hurricane Rita back in 2005 for strategic recon, while small UAVs can be used by tactical teams on demand (with an emergency COA). But don’t forget, most of the population and damage is near water (the whole being on the coast thing), and so littoral structural issues such as whether the bridges are damaged or debris is fixing to wash down and take out a piling become important for responder access, homeowner return to home and work, and to identify and speed up recovery. Unmanned marine vehicles, especially small robot boats, can be dropped in the water and get fantastic sonar images.

Raspadskaya Mine Disaster

Another mine disaster, the death toll now at 32 with 58 trapped or missing. No sign of robots, but what is coming over the wires suggests that robots would be useful– if intrinsically safe, the robots could penetrate the mine to “see” through the hazy conditions to give rescuers an understanding of the situation and to take air samples. (To paraphrase the Johnny Cash/June Carter classic tune, “how high’s the methane, Momma…?”)

But rescue robots are a technology for after a disaster happens. Clearly much more work needs to be done throughout the work to exploit technology for prevention.

Qinghai Quake and robots

What is it with disasters? They’re coming fast and furious. Here’s the 411 on robots at the China quake.

The Qinghai quake is the latest of the series of tragedies. Prof. Bin Li at the Shenyang Institute of Automation and an active member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Safety Security Rescue Robots, contacted the Chinese national earthquake response service this morning. It doesn’t look like ground robots are appropriate– the structures are mostly small and constructed from brick and mud. That type of construction is problematic– the brick and mud turns to a liquidized dust, acting like water to fill all the voids and displaces air. Even if there are voids, the suspended dust causes respiratory distress. Eric Rasmussen InSTEDD has many tales to tell of the similar Turkey earthquake.

China, by the way, does have at least one rescue robot. Bin tells me it was deployed to the mine collapse but could not be used because it wasn’t waterproof. (A gentle aside to manufacturers: d’uh!)

Aerial vehicles might be helpful for tactical operations and I can’t help thinking that an unmanned marine vehicle with an acoustic camera capable of penetrating turbid waters could provide more information about that crack in the big dam…

Bin was a participant in the NSF-JST-NIST workshop at Disaster City at the first of the month and we look forward to working with him and his group. In the meantime.. I’m speaking tomorrow at AUVSI day at the Capitol– I hope that in the future we can do more than offer our prayers.

Robin

China and West Virginia: Mobile Robots for Mine Rescue

Just as I was sitting down to blog (with relief) about the rescue of the Chinese miners, the explosion in West Virginia hit the news. Terrible, terrible. Our prayers go out to the miners and families.

Rescue robots have been used in mine disasters in the past and perhaps they will be of service in Raleigh, WV.

Some background on mine rescue robots. From 2007-2008, I led a study for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) on underground mine rescue robots, getting to work with Dr. Jeff Kravitz and his team, attending a rescue competition at the MSHA academy in West Virginia, plus participated in two different mine disasters: Midas Gold Mine and Crandall Canyon Utah. A summary of the study was published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine.

Jeff had been exploring rescue robots from mine disasters since before 9/11(!) and has pioneered their use- MSHA is second only to CRASAR in the number of deployments to actual incidents.

Coal mine disasters are tricky for robots- in part because methane is often present. As in “hmm… which would be worse- the explosion or the huge amounts of coal catching fire?” I know of only 1 robot rated to work in those conditions and not trigger an explosion- MSHA’s modified Remotec Wolverine, called V2. Making it intrinsically safe made it much bigger and much heavier, which are not necessarily pluses for agility. MSHA has an iRobot Packbot and is upgrading it, while NIOSH has a set of Gemini robots developed by Sandia Labs. The smaller robots we used at Midas and Crandall Canyon didn’t have to be intrinsically safe because one was a gold mine and the air quality testing at the coal mine showed there was no significant presence of methane- mine environments in the Rockies are different from mine environments in the East.

Mine disasters are also tricky because there are at least three different scenarios for using a robot- and each scenario favors a different type of robot. One size does not fit all. I’ll try to upload some slides to go through the unique challenges posed by each scenario.

Chile and tsunami: what robots can do

The news this morning of the Chilean earthquake continues to highlight the possibilities for robots to help in the response and recovery.

Certainly the big surveillance UAVs such as the Predator and Global Hawk variants can give a “big picture” overview, but don’t forget that search and rescue is largely done by small teams working independently who need information “on demand”. They can’t tell you what they want until they get there. And if they don’t get within a few minutes, they move on. Small helicopter like UAVs can help them assess a collapsed building, see people trapped on the other side of a pile of rubble, and get the views they want. Small, shoe-box sized robots can drive into rubble deeper than a search camera or boroscope can go, finding voids that would be otherwise missed. And unmanned marine vehicles can determine if the substructure of bridges and sea walls is still intact and whether rubble and debris is being washed into the footings and will cause damage.

We’re standing by, hoping to help and hoping to learn. And hoping that one day responders all over the world will have these robots to use immediately.