Preventing disasters: small unmanned aerial vehicles for evacuation and crowd control

Preventing disasters: small unmanned aerial vehicles for evacuation and crowd control

Posted by admin on May 25, 2014 at 3:52 pm America/Chicago

This month's issue of Smithsonian Magazine has an article  "Why are people so comfortable with drones?" on  Brittany Duncan's preliminary study for her NSF graduate fellowship research on using small UAS for evacuation and crowd. Brittany is my PhD student who recently flew the AirRobot at the SR530 mudslide response. It's nice to see that robots are being considered for more than the immediate life-saving aspects of search and rescue. Brittany sees a near future where aerial vehicles can act as "headers" and "heelers" to guide and block people into following the right exits during an evacuation.

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