CRASAR is the oldest institution devoted to promoting the use of ground, marine and aerial unmanned systems for public safety. Since 2001, our trained volunteers have assisted incident command at over 3o disasters, including building collapses, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, marine mass casualty events, nuclear accidents, tsunamis, underground mine explosions, and volcanic eruptions, in 5 countries. … Continue reading “CRASAR is the oldest institution”
I’ve been getting questions about the use of unmanned systems for the recent horrific Montecito mudslides, so let me extend my earlier tweet, both in terms of thoughts and prayers to the victims and also the technical details. It does not appear that small UAS are being used by the formal responders for Montecito. Unmanned … Continue reading “Top 5 Surprises in Unmanned Systems for Mudslides”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm5tcJzS3Go&feature=em-subs_digest[/youtube] The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) coordinated the largest known deployment of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) by public officials for a federally declared disaster- both serving as Air Operations for manned and unmanned aircraft and deploying small UAS ranging in size from DJI Mavics to the Insitu … Continue reading “Hurricane Harvey Deployment for Fort Bend County OEM: 119 flights over 11 days”
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Columbians in the wake of the terrible flooding and mudslide. CRASAR’s experiences with such situations suggest that it is a very difficult search and rescue (and victim recovery) problem. We’re assisted with the Oso Mudslides in partnership with the Fit Innovation Team (some of the video is the … Continue reading “Columbia mudslide: recommendations for UAVs for search and for public works”
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Kiwis and especially to our colleagues at the New Zealand Fire Service who have been diligently adopting robotics. So when a tsunami strikes, what can robots do? As was shown at the 3/11 Japan tsunami, unmanned marine vehicles can accelerate economic recovery by inspecting critical underwater infrastructure … Continue reading “New Zealand: what can robots do for a tsunami and quake?”
A paper to be presented next week at the IEEE International Symposium on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics in Lausanne, Switzerland, details the use of small unmanned aerial systems in two recent Texas floods in Fort Bend County, a major Houston suburb and 10th largest populated county in Texas. The 21 flights over four days … Continue reading “Emergency Managers Find Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Effective for Flooding and Popular With Residents”
[youtube]https://youtu.be/1DYi7_lE6cA[/youtube] I’ll be speaking at the Smithsonian Museum of American History today as part of the 15th Anniversary of 9/11 event. 9/11 was the first reported use of robots for search and rescue and created a legacy that continues to grow for both disaster response and for science and technology. The robots were successful by … Continue reading “The Legacy of 9/11 for Disaster Robotics”
We are just getting word of several building collapses in the Taiwan earthquake, here are some thoughts and data on how robots have been used in previous collapses… Ground robots may be of the most value. In a situation like this where the building has collapsed, small robots will likely to get into voids and … Continue reading “The Taiwan Earthquake: robots”
On Friday morning Jan 15, 2016, team member Chief Fernando Boiteux (on vacation from his position as head of lifeguards for LA County Fire Department) deployed EMILY along the northern shore of Lesvos finding a unique ecological niche for her: in the 100 meter “gap” between the beach and where it is deep enough for lifeguard boats to … Continue reading “EMILY fills “The Gap” between lifeguards in boats and on shore to help 4 boats with 200 refugees arrive safely”
Note: this is a long blog with sections on best practices, where SUAS have been used (and for what missions), the flood of data that interferes with making the most of UAS data and how computer vision can help, and unmanned marine vehicles. CRASAR is standing by to assist with the flooding in Texas with … Continue reading “Texas Floods: How small UAVs have been used at 9 floods in 6 countries. Don’t forget about UMVs!”
