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 … Continue reading “OKC Tornado– unmanned systems not the best fit, here’s why”
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 … Continue reading “Disaster City helps in training of Texas Task Force 1”
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 … Continue reading “China earthquake and Bangladesh collapse… the challenges of remote disasters”
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 … Continue reading “Iran Earthquake: CRASAR monitoring but this type is hard for robots”
Today is the second anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami and the associated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that have taken over 15,000 lives and will cost at least $34 billion. Our hearts and prayers remain with the Japanese people and all of us at CRASAR are honored to have assisted in a … Continue reading “Thoughts on the Second Anniversary of the Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima”
Dr. Robin Murphy, a pioneer in the area of rescue robotics, spoke to the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) Dec. 11 in Tokyo. Murphy directs the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and is the Raytheon Professor in the Department of Computer Science and … Continue reading “Murphy Offers Suggestions to Japanese Government for Faster International Deployments of Rescue Robots (press release)”
A post from robots.net reminded me that I hadn’t updated the blog about Hurricane Sandy. We have not been called and really didn’t expect to be. Sandy hit the NJ/NY area- home turf to Jim Bastan and NJ-TF1, the US&R task force that has been aggressively adopting robots. They fielded the ground robots at the … Continue reading “Hurricane Sandy: watching and prepping for SSRR”
The death toll for the latest Iranian earthquake appears to be settling in around 300 lives lost- a sad number. Iranian rescue roboticist and colleague Amir Soltanzadeh posted on facebook that most of the victims were in 1 story houses which were easy to search. This is where dogs excel- they can cover large areas, determining … Continue reading “Iran Earthquake”
The sad news of the mudslide in Canada is very similar to the 2005 La Conchita mudslide, described in this paper on rescue robots for mudslides, where CRASAR had its first post-World Trade Center deployment of rescue robots at the request of the Ventura County Fire Department. Mudslides are fluidized, so like water, the mud … Continue reading “Landslide in British Columbia: how robots can help in such events”
It is dawn here at Minamisanriku and from my hotel room, I can see streaks of orange over the New Port, the site we first searched and cleared in April. The tendrils of fog driftly past the small islands dotting Shizugawa Bay. We start checking our gear in another hour before breakfast and depart to … Continue reading “In Minamisanriku-Cho, gearing up for first mission”
