Pike River Mine robots fails

Posted by admin on Nov 22, 2010 at 10:22 pm America/Chicago

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 not as sophisticated as they could be due to economic barriers) plus search and rescue is one of the hardest, if not THE hardest, domain. I am afraid that we may be losing sight of while there are many ways for a robot to fail, a single success could save 29 lives.  And if not this time, we learn for the next- because there will always be a next time. Our deepest, best wishes for the miners and their families and also the responders who are pushing the envelope to try to find the missing.