Month: November 2011

Researchers and Responders to Jointly Develop UAV Visual Common Ground

Researchers and responders from The Texas A&M University System have received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a visual “common ground” between operators and responders who use micro and small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for search and rescue.

Following principles in how people know what other people are talking about in conversations, visual common ground will allow responders to easily express where they want the UAV to fly and what angle to examine collapsed structures using an iPad or other tablet. The responders would also be able to review imagery and video while the UAV continues its mission rather than wait for the UAV to land.

Response professionals from the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) Disaster Preparedness and Response Division (DPR) will fly weekly at Disaster City® with researchers from the Texas Engineering Experiment Station’s (TEES) Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), speeding the development and refinement of the natural user interface.

Disaster City® is a 52-acre facility designed featuring full-scale collapsible structures that replicate community infrastructure. The site includes simulations of a strip mall, office building, industrial complex, assembly hall/theater, single-family dwelling, train derailments, three active rubble piles and a small lake.

The grant is the first direct partnering of emergency responders with university professors/researchers for UAV research. Bob McKee, DPR director and agency chief for Texas Task Force 1, serves as a principal investigator with Dr. Robin Murphy, Texas A&M University professor and CRASAR director. The partnership leverages the capabilities of top academic researchers and the preparedness and response expertise of TEEX, all existing within the A&M System.

“Being able to work directly and routinely with responders under conditions as near to a real disaster as one can get will allow the research to progress faster. This could only happen at Texas A&M,” Murphy said. “Normally we’d have to try to condense a year of work into one week of trials, and if something went wrong we’d have to wait months for another opportunity for responders or a demolished building to become available.”

McKee said, “TEEX has been actively involved in efforts to develop and adapt robots for search and rescue applications. Though working with the National Institute for Standards and Technology project to develop standard test methods for emergency response robots to collaborating with scientific researchers and commercial developers at our unique Disaster City® facility, we’re hoping to someday use small UAVs and other unmanned systems to help save lives.”
The grant will help enable emergency responders to take advantage of small “personal” UAVs being developed for the U.S. Department of Defense. Urban search and rescue operations can be more challenging than military peacekeeping operations as they can require assessment and analysis of damaged structures, hazardous areas, and other unique situations.

 

The idea for creating shared displays is a result of over a decade of research on rescue robotics by Murphy, who was recently named one of the most influential women in technology by Fast Company magazine. She has led UAV deployments at numerous disasters starting with Hurricane Katrina. Her work with Dr. Jenny Burke (a former graduate student currently with Boeing), based on CRASAR experiences with ground robots at the World Trade Center, showed that search and rescue specialists were nine times more effective if two responders—not one—worked together using a shared visual display.

The team expects to have an open source tablet interface for AirRobot and Dragan UAVs within 24 months that leads to a significant, measurable improvement in team performance as well as high user acceptance.

 

Contact for TEEX: Brian Blake   Brian.blake@tamu.edu (O) 979-458-6837 (C) 979-324-8995

Contact for TEES: Pam Green  p-green@tamu.edu (O) 979-845-5510 (C) 979-574-4138

Frequently Asked Questions about Roboticists Without Borders

There has been significant interest in CRASAR’s Roboticists Without Borders program from potential members and from agencies. I’ve created a FAQ to the most commonly asked questions and added it to the RWB webpage. I’ll reproduce it here to make it easy to see in one place. If you have more questions, please ask!

Q. Doesn’t RWB compete with companies who make robots or undermine their market?

No! The point is that every response and recovery agency should have robots- but they don’t. RWB facilitates humanitarian use of robots, but also helps promotes robots and encourages adoption. Do the Doctors Without Borders compete with local doctors? No, because there aren’t any doctors where they go. Should there have been more doctors there? Absolutely. Same idea with robots.

Q. Who can join?

Anyone from anywhere can join to contribute equipment, expertise, or donations (or any combination!) using the standard membership form.

Agencies or other potential “users” can create a memorandum of understanding, add CRASAR to their vendor list, or otherwise set up a partnership as governed by their rules- there is no standard form because each agency is different.

Q. How much does it cost to join?

Nothing. But you do have to pay your way each year to a training event and make sure your robot has completed the applicable NIST standards.

Q. If my company or university joins, how often can we expect to go to disasters?

It depends. There is no guarantee that your technology or expertise will be called upon or that you will available if it is. There were 8 deployments of robots in 2010 to 7 incidents and many types of robots were used so we expect the trend to accelerate.

Q. Can my agency or institution create agreements with CRASAR in advance?

Yes, please. When CRASAR was at the University of South Florida, there was a memorandum of understanding with Hillsborough County Fire Rescue that allows CRASAR to be requested and reimbursed as part of the state response system.

Q. How is RWB funded?

RWB is funded by donations, by research grants to CRASAR (when applicable), research overhead from grants. A deployment will either draw from those reserves or be reimbursed by the requesting agency. While we clearly prefer to be reimbursed, CRASAR can generally cover travel costs so that agencies that are skeptical of robots have no financial disincentive to issue an invitation.

Because robots are new and disasters are possibly the most challenging application for robots, many of our members have grants that allow them to go to disasters- the way earthquake engineers  do. Plus the National Science Foundation has Rapid Response Research grants that we can apply for. CRASAR has been generally successful in getting these grants- one was for using UAVs to assess damage to buildings from Hurricane Katrina and the human-robot interaction model that resulted was used by the UAV team at Fukushima.

Q. What is the relationship between CRASAR and RWB?

CRASAR is the center that is responsible for RWB. CRASAR does more than RWB but RWB is a major activity.

Q. CRASAR has an equipment cache, does that mean those robots are the best or will be used first for a disaster?

CRASAR maintains a cache of robots for research that can also be used for deployments. Because these robots must support research, which not all commercial systems do, AND because every disaster is different, the CRASAR cache does not necessarily represent the best match for every incident. It is hoped that the RWB membership will have the best match.

Q. Who/how decides what RWB equipment or members participate in a disaster?

Technically, the buck stops with the director. But generally as soon as a disaster happens, the land, aerial, and marine leads will begin assessing the needs and making recommendations and contacting members to see what they think and what’s available and it generally converges quickly to a consensus. The CRASAR Advisory Board reviews the recommended deployment plan.

Q. Can my agency request RWB participation in an incident (smaller than a disaster) ?

Yes. Members typically welcome the opportunity to work directly with users and get their feedback.

Q. Can my agency request RWB participation in an exercise?

Yes, please! CRASAR offers 2- and 4-hour hands-on awareness classes and a 10 hour operator class to introduce groups to rescue robotics. We will often provide a class and robots at no expense in return for being able to collect data from the responders as they use the robots in their exercise. We’ve trained over 400 responders and emergency managers to date.

IRS-CRASAR team finalist for Best Paper SSRR 2011

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.