Japan: status of rescue robots there and elsewhere

Posted by admin on Mar 21, 2011 at 8:44 am America/Chicago

robots.net has begun to follow this blog (thank you!) and has gently taken me to task for gaps in posting... so let me recap where we are. To the best of my knowledge as of last night when I exchanged email with IRS members, robots from the members of the International Rescue System Institute have not been actually used but have been transported to areas where authorities are requesting help. Underwater assets appear to be of the most interest, as expected (see earlier blogs). Research focus in Japan has been primarily in ground robots. CRASAR remains on stand-by to complement IRS efforts, with Dr. Eric Steimle leading the effort of identifying the best small platform/highly capable sonars combinations for the situations being described to us and getting volunteers through our humanitarian Roboticists Without Borders program. In the micro-UAV front, Prof. Andreas Birk at Jacobs University in Bremen who has participated in field exercises with the German military has sent us his image fusion and mapping software to use with the CRASAR cache of AirRobots and possibly with the Draganflyers and ISENSYS platforms on call.  However, CRASAR remains on stand-by as there is no mission for us and the proximity of operations to the unstable nuclear situation. I continue to get asked about nuclear response robots, so let me recap what I'm hearing about that. A monirobo has been on the site as well as teleoperated fire fighting robots for several days now- the fire fighting robots appear to have been used, I can't tell about the monirobo.   iRobot has apparently sent some packbots as well- they are great for low-level radiation situations (or for high radiation die-in-place conditions)and much more agile that the traditional tank style monirobo. I haven't seen or heard anything about the actual use of the packbots. I haven't heard anything about Red Zone robots (Red Whitaker's company that made the robots used for Chernobyl and Three Mile Island)- but usually those types of robots are custom made after the fact. Here's an example of a small, easily to literally throw in the water unmanned surface vehicle which was used to inspect a bridge damaged by Hurricane Ike and here's a link to a paper about the use at Wilma and Ike.