Category: Press Releases

PRESS RELEASE 4/24/11: Underwater robots clear port, look for victims

Points of Contact in Japan:

Dr. Fumitoshi Matsuno, matsuno@me.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Points of Contact in US:

Dr. Robin Murphy, CRASAR, murphy@cse.tamu.edu, via Kimberly Mallet

Joshua Chamot, National Science Foundation, jchamot@nsf.gov, (703) 292-7730

Tim Schnettler, Texas A&M, tschnettler@tamu.edu, 979-458-2277

Vickie Chachere, University of South Florida, (813) 974-6251

A team of research and industry experts with four state-of-the-art small underwater vehicles from the US-based Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue has returned Sunday from five days in the Minami Sanriku and Rikuzen Takada areas of Japan.  CRASAR worked with the Japanese-based International Rescue Systems institute to inspect port areas as well as search for bodies trapped in flotsam or under submerged rubble. The suitcase-sized robots have advanced imaging sonars that can penetrate the murky water along with video cameras. The robots were deployed at six locations along the coast north of Sendai, working in areas that were unsafe for Japanese Coast Guard divers.  The robots did not find any bodies but received praise from Minami Sanriku Mayor Hitoshi Sato who said that the city’s port facility essential to the fishing industry would be reopened based on the robot data.

The remotely operated vehicles, called ROVs, are extremely small versions similar to the robots used at the BP Oil Spill. They vary in size from the suitcase-sized Seamor to the tiny football-sized AC-ROV to the, making them easy to transport. The SeaBotix SARbot was used the most; it is designed especially for emergency responders to be able to use to find victims trapped underwater in vehicles.  All of the robots have a tether to allow the operators to control the vehicles in real time and see the sonar and video camera footage.

The joint effort was led by Prof. Tetsuya Kimura (Nagaoka University of Technology), Prof. Fumitoshi Matsuno (Kyoto University), and Prof. Robin Murphy (Texas A&M) with funding for the US researchers from the National Science Foundation. The team members donated their time and equipment through the CRASAR humanitarian Roboticists Without Borders program. CRASAR and IRS are the leading research centers on rescue robotics, with CRASAR deploying robots to disasters worldwide including the 9/11 World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina. The other US members were Dr. Eric Steimle from AEOS Inc., a Florida start-up company specializing in marine environmental monitoring, Jesse Rodocker and Sean Newsome from SeaBotix, a leading manufacturer of ROVs, and Karen Dreger from the University of South Florida’s Center for Ocean Technology.

See www.crasar.org for links to example photos and video footage of robots, robot-eye views, and general operations. Higher resolution b-roll is available upon request.

Press Release: Japan-US team deploys underwater robots to coast

PRESS RELEASE 4/20/11

Japan-US team deploys underwater robots to coast

Points of Contact in Japan:

Dr. Fumitoshi Matsuno, matsuno@me.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Points of Contact in US:

Dr. Robin Murphy, CRASAR, murphy@cse.tamu.edu, via Kimberly Mallet

Joshua Chamot, National Science Foundation, jchamot@nsf.gov, (703) 292-7730

Tim Schnettler, Texas A&M, tschnettler@tamu.edu, 979-458-2277

Vickie Chachere, University of South Florida, (813) 974-6251

A team of research and industry experts with four state-of-the-art small underwater vehicles from the US-based Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue are working with the Japanese-based International Rescue Systems institute to inspect damaged bridges, docks, and pipelines, as well as with victim recovery. The team has initially set up in the devastated city of Minami-sanriku on April 19 and will expand into other areas throughout the week. The suitcase-sized robots have advanced imaging sonars that can penetrate the murky water that often thwarts manual divers. The use of underwater robots for disasters is fairly new and the team hopes the five day deployment will lead to the adoption of marine robots worldwide and to improvements and new research directions.

The remotely operated vehicles, called ROVs,  are extremely small versions similar to the robots used at the BP Oil Spill. They vary in size from the suitcase-sized Seamor to the tiny football-sized AC-ROV to the, making them easy to transport to the ravaged coastline north of Sendai. Three of the robots carry specialized sonars that can see through muddy water and have grippers. The SeaBotix SARbot is designed especially for emergency responders to be able to use to find victims trapped underwater in vehicles.  All of the robots have a tether to allow the operators to control the vehicles in real time and see the sonar and video camera footage.

The field team is led by Prof. Tetsuya Kimura (Nagaoka University of Technology) and  Prof. Robin Murphy (Texas A&M) with funding from the National Science Foundation. CRASAR and IRS are the leading research centers on rescue robotics, with CRASAR deploying robots to disasters worldwide including the 9/11 World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina. The US members of the team include Dr. Eric Steimle from AEOS Inc., a Florida start-up company specializing in marine environmental monitoring, Jesse Rodocker and Sean Newsome from SeaBotix, a leading manufacturer of ROVs, and Karen Dreger from the University of South Florida’s Center for Ocean Technology. The team members are donating their time and equipment through the CRASAR humanitarian Roboticists Without Borders program.

IRS and CRASAR have held many joint exercises, including one on the day of the earthquake and tsunami at the Disaster City® facilities at Texas A&M. 21 IRS researchers and students had just finished participating in field trials and workshop with CRASAR and were preparing to return to Japan when the quake struck. The IRS members were able to return home and immediately began deploying their ground robots and advising government agencies. They also invited their US colleagues at CRASAR who assembled a team of small, highly portable remotely operated vehicles.

A joint Japan-US press conference in Japan is tentatively scheduled for April 24 and photographs, video of the robots and what they are seeing, and updates will be posted to the CRASAR website daily, as internet connections permit. Videoconference interviews with team members may be possible, again depending on the situation.  Dr. Murphy and other team members will be available for follow up interviews.

SARbot making a test dive on April 19, 2011, photo courtesy of Karen Dreger, CRASAR, & NSF



PRESS RELEASE 4/18/11: Underwater Robots to Help Japan Recovery

Points of Contact:

Dr. Robin Murphy, CRASAR, murphy@cse.tamu.edu, via Ms. Kimberly Mallett (979) 845-8737

Joshua Chamot, National Science Foundation, jchamot@nsf.gov, (703) 292-7730

Tim Schnettler, Texas A&M, tschnettler@tamu.edu, 979-458-2277

Vickie Chachere, University of South Florida, (813) 974-6251

A team of experts and four state-of-the-art small underwater vehicles led by Texas A&M with funding from the National Science Foundation will be working with their Japanese counterparts to help with inspect damaged bridges, docks, and pipelines, as well as with victim recovery.  Restoration of utilities, transportation, and shipping typically depend on inspections by manual divers, who must work in murky waters and in fear of debris being washed into them by the high currents.  Advanced underwater vehicles have been used in the aftermath of Hurricanes Wilma and Ike and the Haiti Earthquake, but little is understood about how these robots can be used for disasters or how they can be designed to be more effective. In order to learn more about these technologies while helping local townships, the International Rescue Systems (IRS) institute in Japan invited the team to assist with an intense five-day effort from April 19-23 around Sendai and Minami-sanriku-cho.

The robots vary in size from the tiny football-sized AC-ROV to the suitcase-sized Seamor, making them easy to transport to the ravaged coastline around Sendai. Three of the robots carry specialized sonars that can see through muddy water and one, the Seabotix SARbot, has a gripper designed especially for rescuing victims trapped underwater.  All of the robots have a tether to allow the operators to see and control the vehicles in real time.

The five person team consists of industry experts from AEOS and Seabotix and researchers from Texas A&M and the University of South Florida’s Center for Ocean Technology. The team is being led by Prof. Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M University, and Dr. Eric Steimle from AEOS, a  Florida start-up company specializing in marine environmental monitoring.  The team members are donating their time and equipment through the CRASAR humanitarian Roboticists Without Borders program. CRASAR is the leading organization in the world and has deployed land, sea, and aerial robots to 11 previous disasters including the 9/11 World Trade Center Collapse and Hurricane Katrina.

A joint Japan-US press conference in Japan is tentatively scheduled for April 24 and photographs, video of the robots and what they are seeing, and updates will be posted to the CRASAR website daily, as internet connections permit. Videoconference interviews with team members may be possible, again depending on the situation.  Dr. Murphy and other team members will be available for follow up interviews.

Word from Japan on robots and Fukushima

We’ve heard from Prof. Satoshi Tadokoro, director the International Rescue Systems Institute, who is the leading rescue robots researcher in Japan. He’s been asked about why aren’t robots being used for the reactor– here’s his response:

Several types of firefighting robots have been developed by Tokyo FD,
Osaka FD, Kanagawa FD, etc. in Japan.  Most of them are small type UGV.
A large unmanned spraying robot of Tokyo FD has been used for
large-scale fires, such as at Bridgestone fire incident.  I do not know
why it is not used at Fukushima case.  Maybe the reachable
distance/height of spraying would not be enough for this plant, in
addition to the radiation issue.  A robot developed after the JCO
incident by METI has been used in exercises at Rokkasho nuclear plant.
It is being actually used for monitoring the radiation.  Many robots
were developed after this incident, but they did not continued.  Power
plant conpanies mentioned that they did not need such robots because
their nuclear plants never have accidents and are safe.

This is a common problem. Emergencies are outside the normal so it’s hard to speed money in anticipation of them, hard to save for that rainy day. The robotics community has so much technology just 18 months from being hardened and packaged for responders to use…

I remain depressed that the US US&R teams carry with them pretty much the same technology they had in 2001 at the World Trade Center. Sure a Predator or Global Hawk may be circling overhead and that imagery eventually is scrubbed and makes it to them if they have sufficient bandwidth, but robots and sensors in their hands and under their control, nope.

Japanese Rescue Robots are Back Home and at Work, CRASAR on Standby

We’ve just gotten word from Dr. Tetsuya Kimura that the Japanese delegation led by the International Rescue Systems Institute did arrive back in Japan. Dr. Tadokoro is en route though the roads are closed to Sendai (his home) with the Active Scope Camera, which is possibly the most capable robot for tight spaces (we used it at the Berkman Plaza Collapse). Dr. Koyanagi is deploying his QUINCE robot around his home area of Tokyo and the rest of the delegation is getting organized to join the Sendai team to assist with the rescue.

UPDATE: the Sendai members’ families are reportedly OK!

We remain on standby for an official invitation. We are recommending small UAVs (the AirRobot and Draganflyer multiple rotor helis plus the traditional ones) for aerial inspection of upper levels of buildings and lower altitude checks (CRASAR has AirRobots while Mark Bateson is looking to bring the Draganflyers and Chandler Griffin of ISENSYS is always ready with his helis), Dr. Howie Choset’s snake robot, small ROVs for bridge inspection and underwater recovery (being coordinated by Dr. Eric Steimle at AEOS),  and our workhorses for inspecting the interior of rubble- Inuktun Extremes and Micro-VGTV. These complement the slightly larger UGVs and Active Scope Camera that the IRS researchers have.

Our hearts and prayers go out to our colleagues and the Japanese people.

Japanese quake: Leading Researchers Gathered at Texas A&M

See video from KBTX on the robots and exercise.

update: the death toll is climbing to horrific numbers and the team is all sending our thoughts and prayers for the victims and to our colleagues who must be so worried about their families.

Ironically, the leading researchers from Japan in rescue robotics led by Dr. Satoshi Tadakoro of the International Rescue Systems Institute are here in the USA for the JST-RESPONDR exercise and workshop that CRASAR organized. They were heading back this morning, but now with more urgency. They have tentatively requested our assistance from our Roboticists Without Borders program, but we are waiting for the required formal request.

The types of robots that based on the exercises and past experience that would be of use include: small Unmanned Aerial Systems to survey damage, particularly from the sides and looking in, snake UGVs (Dr. Howie Choset’s snake was the star of the exercises here and has been used for archeological exploration in Egypt), and underwater ROVs for inspection (Dr. Eric Steimle has had significant experience leading our efforts at Hurricanes Wilma and Ike), and tether-based UGVs (our standard cache).

Robot Revolution: Dean of Invention

Robin Murphy, Bob McKee, and CRASAR robots working at Disaster City will be featured this Friday, November 5, at 9pm CT (channel 103 GREEN on Suddenlink) on Planet Green’s Original Series Dean of Invention. This episode entitled “Robot Revolution” will focus on environmental challenges that must be met by robots because human beings are physically unable to meet them.

Dean of Invention is hosted by Dean Kamen, visionary inventor and creator of the first robot competition. Robin Murphy is the Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University and the director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue. Bob McKee is the director of the Urban Search & Rescue division of the Texas Engineering Extension Service.

Chile Mine Disaster, Trapped Victims, and Survivor Buddy

CRASAR was contacted shortly after the Chiliean mine collapse that left 33 miners unaccounted for. The situation was quite similar to the Crandall Canyon Utah mine disaster in 2007 that we assisted the Mine Safety and Health Administration on– however the major difference was that the inner diameter of the borehole was much smaller- on the order of 3.5 inches, whereas at Crandall Canyon we had closer to 9 inches. 9 inches is currently the smallest we can get robots that are waterproof and able to function when they land in the pile of mud from the drilling,such as the one built by Inuktun and operated by Pipe Eye International. As we worked to see if we could do better, the miners were miraculously found alive- so the search and rescue robot wasn’t needed.

But now the question is how to keep the trapped miners comfortable and unstressed as they wait for extraction. The has been a topic of research that we are conducting with Prof. Cliff Nass at Stanford University, a world leader in how people communicate through media (such as computers or robots), since 2007. We call the project “Survivor Buddy” – building a robot multi-media “head” that wasn’t creepy. We were originally funded by Microsoft (thanks!) and since 2009 by the National Science Foundation (thanks, too!). The original version of Survivor Buddy was cited by Popular Science as a “Best of 2009” and we have just completed a much lighter, more agile version seen in these YouTube clips here and here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVB_mgW2D8g[/youtube]  [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1E6SQVNb4I[/youtube]

We’ve requested permission to come to Chile and observe, now that things have settled down (they didn’t need MORE people on-site right after they found the miners). This is quite the opportunity to learn how trapped victims react… and perhaps some of the lessons Cliff and I and our great grad students (especially the newly graduated Dr. Victoria Groom) have learned can be of some help.

Robots in Discover Magazine May Issue

The May 2010 issue of Discover Magazine features CRASAR director Robin Murphy as one of four roboticists interviewed in “Machine Dreams.” Online interviews appear as part of the DISCOVER/NSF Grand Challenges in Science: Robotics event.

Living with Robots screened at Sundance

Honda’s short-film documentary, Living with Robots, was screened at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan 22, 2010. Rescue robot footage from CRASAR and director Robin Murphy appear throughout the documentary.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF0WsvfG_nI[/youtube]