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

Posted by admin on Apr 25, 2011 at 4:55 am America/Chicago

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.