Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M University

Washington state bridge collapsed when a truck’s cargo seemed to hit a support girder

Austin Dalton — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:29:30 +0000

An 18-wheeler carrying an oversize load struck part of the Interstate 5 bridge over Washington’s Skagit River. This hit caused to pavement to give way, causing two other vehicles to plunge into the water. Only one of the three people involved remained hospitalized Friday. That lady was in stable condition, according to Skagit Valley Hospital.
Here is a link to the full article at CNN .

UAVs and the Moore Tornado: response to CNN blog

Dr. Robin Murphy — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:43:18 +0000

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

Dr. Robin Murphy — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:55:46 +0000

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.

Shrewbot Uses Whiskers to Map Its Environment

Austin Dalton — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:17:41 +0000

A new robot was shown off at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) called the Shrewbot, which is modeled after the Etruscan pygmy shrew. This robot uses its whiskers to map the objects in an area, and does not use any other senors. This research could have robot that go into area with low viability and still be able to map and understand the environment it is working in.
Here is the full aritcle at IEEE Spectrum.

Draganflyer credited with first live save with a search and rescue robot!

Dr. Robin Murphy — Thu, 09 May 2013 23:00:45 +0000

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!

Quadrotor With Tilting Propellers Can Twist in Midair

Austin Dalton — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:56:51 +0000

This new quadrotor has 8 independent controls that control the velocity and the angle of all the rotors. One of the new capabilities that could be useful is the fact that if you had a camera that could not tilt you still could get that view by tilting the entire quadrotot giving you better control over what you can see. The quadrotor is still in prototype phase, but this robot could have interesting applications for scanning and seeing disaster areas better.
Here is the link to the full article at IEEE Spectrum .

Disaster City helps in training of Texas Task Force 1

Austin Dalton — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:45:14 +0000

Every year, one of the three Texas Task Force 1 teams spends a weekend getting hands-on training in the 52-acre facility called Disaster City, a Texas Engineering Extension Service facility just south of College Station’s Easterwood Airport, serves as the training grounds for Texas Task Force 1. ”Today is about working in the suits, being safe around radiological contamination, proper planning and knowing how to work as a team,” Operations Chief Jeff Saunders said.

The full article is at theeagle.com

China earthquake and Bangladesh collapse… the challenges of remote disasters

Dr. Robin Murphy — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:26:08 +0000

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

Dr. Robin Murphy — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:17:49 +0000

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.

Iran Earthquake: CRASAR monitoring but this type is hard for robots

Dr. Robin Murphy — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:00:03 +0000

Dr. Tetsu Kimura and member of our IRS-CRASAR expeditions is coming back from Robocup Rescue in Iran and has asked about CRASAR robots for the Iran earthquake. I am taking the liberty of sharing my reply:

The earthquake is awful and what another tragic loss of life. I am a great admirer of Amir and his efforts. We’ve been watching the earthquake here– I don’t think the robots would be of much use but certainly would try to support a response. It is painful to see the loss of life.

The primary damage based on the media- which could be wrong- appears to be to mud and brick houses versus multi-story commercial buildings, if victims survive they are probably fairly shallow (less than 6m) and in voids surrounded by brick and mud has become sand– there are generally no voids from the surface to the survivor for the robot to penetrate. Dogs can readily detect the presence of a person and then it requires manpower for extraction. Existing techniques work well for depths of 6m. Robots are slow compared to canines, and CRASAR deployment with FLTF-3 during Hurricane Charley and FLTF-3 deployment of ground robots at Hurricane Katrina showed that ground robots didn’t provide a cost/benefit for wide area search of urban residences. So unless it’s a multi-story building such as an apartment that has collapsed, current ground robots won’t make a difference and we recommend more canine teams. In the future, something like Dan Goldman’s sandsnake robots on a large scale could help.

Landslides are also challenging for ground robots, as we saw at the La Conchita mudslides- as with the mud and brick residences you have nothing but dense dirt, not the void spaces seen in a commercial concrete structure.

The nuclear facility is another matter, of course, and the situation may call for ground and aerial inspection.

For the wide area search of residences, besides canine teams other technologies such as ground penetrating radar and better informatics to coordinate researchers and resources would be a huge potential contribution and why the Center for Emergency Informatics exists.

Finally, there is the large travel time as Satoshi noted for the Tanzania collapse, so we would arrive around 72 hours later, outside the probability of long-term survivors. The robots would add little to recovery of the critical infrastructure in this case.

Please let me know what you think. In the meantime our prayers are with the victims, their families, and the responders.