We’re watching the NZ quake and wishing the survivors, families, and responders the very best. CRASAR and the sister groups pursuing emergency informatics at Texas A&M and the International Rescue Systems Institute in Japan are on stand-by and have put out the usual offers of assistance- just a reminder we don’t self-deploy. The NZ quake … Continue reading “NZ Quake… robots and structures”
It looks like from the internet news that it has been a busy day in New Zealand with two robots and a third being prepped. My hat’s off to the Kiwis for aggressively pursuing this technology. I know of only one other case- the Midas Gold Mine Nevada collapse- where more than one robot was … Continue reading “MSHA V2 robot going to New Zealand, CRASAR joining the team”
A sad day with the robot failing in New Zealand and no resolution on the missing miners. I got asked many times today by the NZ media about the ways a bomb squad robot could fail or fail being used as an underground mine rescue robot. Mobile robot technology is still primitive (most robots are … Continue reading “Pike River Mine robots fails”
Peter Griffin of the Science Media Centre in New Zealand has just given us a heads up that rescuers will be attempting to deploy a robot in the search for the 29 missing miners from the Pike River coal mine explosion. Our prayers are with the miners, their families, and the responders and we hope … Continue reading “Pike River Coal Mine explosion in New Zealand”
On July 16, 2010, a parking garage at a condo building collapsed, with at least one person thought to be trapped. New Jersey Task Force 1 and another New Jersey UASI team responded with robots! NJ-TF1 (the only US&R team in the US that I’m aware of that owns rescue robots ) used their Inuktun … Continue reading “NJ-TF1 and New Jersey UASI teams used robots at Hackensack collapse!”
What is it with disasters? They’re coming fast and furious. Here’s the 411 on robots at the China quake. The Qinghai quake is the latest of the series of tragedies. Prof. Bin Li at the Shenyang Institute of Automation and an active member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Safety Security Rescue Robots, contacted the … Continue reading “Qinghai Quake and robots”
Just as I was sitting down to blog (with relief) about the rescue of the Chinese miners, the explosion in West Virginia hit the news. Terrible, terrible. Our prayers go out to the miners and families. Rescue robots have been used in mine disasters in the past and perhaps they will be of service in … Continue reading “China and West Virginia: Mobile Robots for Mine Rescue”
The Haiti earthquake is looking grim. At this point CRASAR has not been contacted about assisting and is unlikely to be. The two USAID teams, CA-TF2 and VA-TF1 , are being deployed. Reports suggest that there was a hospital collapse. In these large geographically distributed disasters, aerial assets (manned or unmanned) are helpful in establishing … Continue reading “Haiti: Prayers and best wishes”
I had the good fortune to attend the Robotics Rodeo at Ft. Hood last week- a rodeo of unmanned ground robotics hosted by U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and Fort Hood III Corps (go Phantom Warriors!). A wonderful experience and many thanks to the CO Gen. Ricky Lynch (he has … Continue reading “Robotics Rodeo at Ft. Hood”
I think UAVs for wildland firefighting is a good thing, honest! I’m at the AUVSI North America conference– yesterday I gave two papers, one on the wildland firefighting descriptive analysis that we did with Lockheed Martin on the use of ground robots and one on our Rollover Pass, Texas, response. The wildland firefighting paper made … Continue reading “Wildland firefighting, UGVs, and UAVs”
