The IRS-CRASAR paper on our April deployment to Japan was a finalist for best paper at the IEEE Safety Security Rescue Robot conference, which met this week in Kyoto. The work by the Japanese team that produced the QUINCE robot used at Fukushima deservedly won- but it was a great honor to be a finalist! The paper is Use of Remotely Operated Marine Vehicles at Minamisanriku and Rikuzentakata Japan for Disaster Recovery by R. Murphy, K. Dreger, S. Newsome, J. Rodocker, E. Steimle. T. Kimura, K. Makabe, F. Matsuno, S.Tadokoro, and K. Kon. Congratulations all! The paper should be available from download from IEEE Xplore shortly.
Archive for the ‘In the News’ Category
IRS-CRASAR team finalist for Best Paper SSRR 2011
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on November 5th, 2011 at 11:08 pm GMT+7
In Japan but reaching out to Turkey…
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on October 23rd, 2011 at 8:14 pm GMT+7
We got word about the Turkey earthquake from our medical lead, Eric Rasmussen, while we were on the water deploying ROVs and an AUV in Minami Sanriku Cho today. The CNN site is sketchy but it looks like very challenging conditions- beside getting help to the site, the types of houses and the weather are tough on searching, on victims in the cold, and on rescuers.
The International Rescue Systems Institute is looking at the availability of their caterpillar-like Active Scope Camera, the best robot I know of for penetrating extremely narrow voids. Small UAVs may be of use in understanding the situation and the civil engineering. I can’t tell from the news about marine vehicles– as one of the technologists here in Japan with me said: “I had no idea so much infrastructure is related to water!”
Today, the city of Minami Sanriku is celebrating the opening of their port after the tsunami– a great day and great progress in recovery. But a sad day for Turkey. Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims, their families, and the responders.
Hurricane Irene: hope it’s not 7.5 days after landfall that robots get deployed
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on August 26th, 2011 at 10:36 am GMT+7
The Roboticists Without Borders members are standing by to assist with Hurricane Irene at no cost.
We’ve been pinging our contacts in the response and emergency management communities to remind them about the uses of robots. I recently presented a paper at AUVSI that analyzed the 8 known deployments of robots at 7 disasters in 2010– if the incident command agency or company already had robots or an agreement in place, robots were used with 0.5 days. If not, it was an average of 7.5 days before the robots were used (land, marine, or air– that wasn’t a factor), well beyond the critical life saving first few days. 10 years after the successful use at 9/11, robots still haven’t been integrated into responses.
For a hurricane, as with a small earthquake or tornado, UAVs and marine vehicles tend to be of more immediate and impact larger regions than ground robots. That’s because there is usually little damage to large numbers of commercial buildings- instead homes are devastated. But homes create debris fields less than 3m deep, which canines and existing tools work great with and faster than small ground robots. State National Guard teams often fly Predators, but don’t rule out the value of small UAVs hand launched by response teams to get on demand “hummingbird” views of the situation.
New Jersey has two UASI teams with ground robots and I’ve heard they’ve been looking at small UAVs, but I don’t know of any other response agencies in the projected area with rescue robots. Please let me know if there are (we’ll mail you a CRASAR patch for confirmed info).
But regardless, my thoughts on Hurricane Irene comes down to this: I hope that no lives will be lost and damage will be minimal.
CRASAR on CNN with Randi Kaye at 12:45 Central (Aug. 11)
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on August 11th, 2011 at 9:40 am GMT+7
June 22: Robo Virtual Summit on Mobile Robots for Emergency Response
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on June 21st, 2011 at 12:03 pm GMT+7
The Robo Virtual Summit this summer was to be on navigation and autonomy but now has shifted to Mobile Robots for Emergency Response, with people such as Bob Quinn talking about the QinetiQ robots and Tim Trainer about the iRobot bots at Fukushima- these are guys with their boots on the ground. Other good talks as well. I will be giving one of the talks (actually it was taped last week) in the afternoon and be available for questions. Check it out!
Japanese Colleagues Get JST Grant and CRASAR plans its return
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on June 17th, 2011 at 2:34 pm GMT+7
Prof. Fumitoshi Matsuno, the vice-president of the International Rescue Systems Institute (IRS), and the organizer of the IRS-CRASAR deployment with the ROVs north of Sendai had just received a grant from the Japanese Science and Technology agency according the Japan Times. The IRS team certainly deserves funding for their continued efforts. This grant matches our NSF RAPID. We have received the second phase funds of our RAPID and expect to return to work with Prof. Matsuno and Prof. Kimura again in September or October. Thank you NSF!
Podcast interview by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on June 17th, 2011 at 11:30 am GMT+7
David Walsh included a podcast with me at http://www.asme.org/kb/news—articles/media/2011/06/robots-for-resuce-in-japan.
Washington Post live chat…
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on May 25th, 2011 at 10:22 am GMT+7
TV and press coverage on CRASAR team in Japan
Posted by Dr. Robin Murphy on May 1st, 2011 at 12:30 pm GMT+7
Here’s some links to TV, print, and radio coverage from the Florida team members (Eric Steimle of AEOS and Karen Dreger of the USF Center for Ocean Technology):
WTSP interview with Eric Steimle
Tampa Tribune article. Nice pix of Karen Dreger’s head. One correction, Robin Murphy was never at the Center for Ocean Technology– CRASAR was over at the main campus.
WUSF’s Mark Schreiner interviewed Eric Steimle and Karen Dreger.
