The amazing FIRST Robotics Competition Lego League is on disasters this year! Over a dozen rescue roboticists are joining me in providing expert interviews and robotics advice to the middle schoolers participating internationally. CRASAR is also working the Dr. Michael Johnson of the Center for Emergency Informatics to provide awards and educational materials for teachers and parents. CRASAR will be at the DARPA Robotics Challenge with robots used at disasters and experts for the kids to see and interact with. More to come!
Category: Director’s Blog
September 11: 11 years after the first use of rescue robots
It is always difficult to write about 9/11 and the World Trade Center disaster, as the horror of the event still lingers in my mind.
For the first years after 9/11, I had little to report on the year in disaster robotics as adoption has been slow. But since 2010, the number of incidents that are using robots and using them quickly are rising, with 2011 being a major year with robots at the Christchurch and Tohoku earthquakes. Robots have been used in 35 disasters internationally, with ground robots being used most frequently from mine and building collapses, but UAVs and marine vehicles increasing in use as well. A Draganflyer UAV was credited with a live save of an injured and disoriented driver who had gotten out of his car in the cold of Canada, so that was a breakthrough this year- finally a rescue robot has saved a life.
Besides land, sea, and aerial robots are being used more frequently, another heartening trend is the emerging meme that robots can be used for prevention and preparedness of disasters, not just for response and recovery. Indeed the attendees of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics constructed a roadmap emphasizing this point, noting that this helps reduce the cost of the robots- if you use it every day for port security, for routine infrastructure inspection, you are likely to use it for the non-routine tasks as well.
But in the end, everyone here has the deepest condolences for the families of the victims and of the responders to 9/11. It was an honor to be there and to assist in a small way so that we can assist better in the future.
White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Brainstorming
A big shout out for the FEMA Think Tank team for their White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Brainstorming session. The focus was primarily on citizen to citizen informatics for relief, but one of the 10 “winning” topics was something that researchers here have been working on: crowd sourcing imagery. James Caverlee and John Mander as part of the Center for Emergency Informatics, our “mother” center, have been exploring what it takes to understand the state of damage from a civil engineering perspective with funding from NSF.
Just a note that robotics generally provide public sector to public sector informatics (deployed by an agency, data is used by an agency) that is mostly used for response and recovery, versus relief efforts. Robots, especially UAVs, could contribute to the crowd sourcing of imagery, so even though robotics wasn’t one of the top 10 ideas, it was hidden in there!
CRASAR and RWB Featured in TIME Rise of the Robots special issue!
Check out the TIME Magazine special edition “Rise of the Robots”! Daniel Cray started out interviewing us as a sidebar and then wrote a larger article “Search Engines” about rescue robotics in general as well as “Rescue Robots to Borrow” which was about CRASAR and Roboticists Without Borders. Both are great intros to rescue robotics, starting with Jim Bastan at NJ-TF1 which is the only US&R team in the US with robots. The pictures are all ground robots, so please don’t forget about the UAVs and UMVs (marine vehicles).
in memoriam: Michael Beebe a Roboticist Without Borders
It is with great sadness that I must report that one of members of Roboticists Without Borders, Michael Beebe, has passed away unexpectedly at his home. Michael epitomized the RWB spirit of our volunteers- he had attended the 2013 Summer Institute at Disaster City® at his own expense in order to be trained as a data manager for the field teams. He has been an active advocate for disaster robotics, leveraging his experience as a Commander in the US Navy and later as a consultant on major initiatives such as Dr. Gary Gilbert’s robotic casualty evacuation program. Mike’s positive attitude, hard work in promoting robotics, and outgoing nature was an inspiration to me. He represents the commitment and expertise that make the Roboticists Without Borders program so special. Please see: http://www.bwfosterfuneralhome.com/Content/Obituary/193 for Michael’s Obituary.
UAVs and the Moore Tornado: response to CNN blog
CNN has a nice blog post on the UAVs that weren’t used at Moore. Here are my comments:
Small UAVs have been used at 11 disasters internationally. The first use of small UAVs was in the US by the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, which I direct, during Hurricane Katrina as part of the Florida State Emergency Response Team. We have been advising on the use and procedures for getting permissions for the tornado response, as flying even a small UAV requires coordination with the other activity- hence the no fly zone. The FAA has had an emergency COA process for years, though we find many agencies and industries are not aware of it. We are happy to assist agencies and industries in adopting and deploying unmanned systems of any kind.
OKC Tornado– unmanned systems not the best fit, here’s why
Our hearts go out to the victims and the responders in Oklahoma. We have been working with the FEMA Innovation Team from shortly after the devastation occurred, however aerial and ground unmanned systems are not a good fit for this situation.
In terms of UAVs: There’s already aerial coverage from manned assets and it does not appear that multistory commercial buildings are heavily damaged. Two-story houses and apartment buildings and “strip malls” are well understood failures so additional aerial views are generally not needed to provide more information. If UAVs were available to the first responders, then they would be a much less expensive source of aerial information than manned helicopters or exploiting news helicopters. UAVs provide the ability to serve as wireless nodes (indeed, a big shout out to Roboticists Without Borders member Black Swift Technologies for their work with that) but the coordination with air traffic control and manned assets plus the deployment of COWs (cellular towers on wheels) means that if there weren’t available immediately, they are less likely to be of benefit.
In terms of UGVs: This is a wide affected area with “shallow” debris versus a big building collapse. Canines are the quickest way to locate any survivors that aren’t shouting or aren’t on the surface of the debris. You don’t need the UGV to penetrate the debris further than what a search camera can go to help find survivors or speed extrication.
In terms of UMVs: If there are lakes and streams, marine vehicles might be useful in searching for missing person who may have been swept into a pond and drowned.
We continue to stand by to provide assistance as needed.
Draganflyer credited with first live save with a search and rescue robot!
Check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apEnf-0Rzb4&feature=youtu.be
Last night (May 9, 2013), a Draganflyer X4-ES UAV with the FLIR Tau infrared imager was used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to locate the driver after a car wreck- he had wandered off in the cold. Dragan is a member of our Roboticists Without Borders and has been active in our CBRNE experimentation. The medical personnel said the driver would have had only an hour or two more to survive. This is the first reported life saved with a Public Safety UAV. Congratulations!
China earthquake and Bangladesh collapse… the challenges of remote disasters
The Chinese earthquake and the Bangladesh collapse coming on the heels of the Tanzania building collapse illustrate the need for rapidly deployed, regional teams of disaster robots that can quickly get there. The Bangladesh collapse might have been aided by the use of small robots to penetrate in the rubble. Ground robots are less useful for a wide area of residential buildings, though UAVs are very helpful for assessing the extent of damage. But for now, the best we can do in the rescue robot community is to send our thoughts and prayers to the victims, their families, and the responders.
Waco Explosion: no robots needed
We are all keeping the victims, the families, and the responders in the devastating explosion of the fertilizer plant in Waco in our thoughts and prayers. We’ve reached out and there doesn’t appear to be a need for robots at this time. The event occurred in the evening, a problematic time to fly sUAVs to get an immediate overview. Damage to residential areas do not require robots, as canines are much faster at detecting victims and the debris is usually sufficiently shallow that the interior view from a robot is not needed for searching or extrication. Robots are sometimes useful for forensics- to enter areas and capture the scene before people enter and disturb it by virtue of entering. But the word is that they aren’t needed for this case.
