It’s 9/11 and it is perhaps karma that I am at the NDIA Human-Systems Division Workshop- because the lesson learned at the WTC was that the robots were physically good enough, but the biggest area for improvement was the human-robot interaction. Check out Jenn Casper’s paper
at http://tinyurl.com/9dt4nrg – it’s one of the most highly cited papers in human-robot interaction.

Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families of the victims and all the people working in homeland security and homeland defense to prevent terrorism and eliminate the need for rescue robots for that particular application.