Mission Critical: Public Safety

V O L U M E 4 N O. 3 | A U G U S T 2 0 1 4

SECURING TEXAS

WITH UAS

Inside This Issue: EMILY Aids Ocean Rescues Where the Action is in Unmanned Security DARPA Advances Security Challenge

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V O L U M E 4 N O. 3 | A U G U S T 2 0 1 4

CONTENTS FEATURE

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4 Essential Components

The Latest in Security Robotics

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Fast Facts Stats on Public Safety and UAS Use

Over the Heart of Texas Arlington Police Rack Up Year of Leptron Flights

18 Timeline

Securing the World With Robots

21 Uncanny Valley

Grant Money for Robots

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State of the Art

28 Testing, Testing

A Look at Where Robots and Unmanned Systems Are Used for Protection

Before Disaster Strikes, Train at Disaster City

15 Technology Gap

29

End Users

ROVs Reduce Underwater Search Risk

Sniffing Out Crime

16 Q & A

Daniel Stilwell VaCAS River Recon USV

On the Cover: Arlington, Texas, police use a Leptron to get an aerial image of a traffic accident. Page 8. Photo courtesy APD Police Office of Communications.

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MISSION CRITICAL CONTACTS Michael Toscano President & CEO mtoscano@auvsi.org Gretchen West Executive Vice President gwest@auvsi.org Brett Davis Vice President of Communications and Publications, Editor bdavis@auvsi.org

22 The Jetsons Meets RoboCop

Securing Your Home and Office With Robots

Danielle Lucey Managing Editor dlucey@auvsi.org

Mike Greeson Senior Business Development Manager mgreeson@auvsi.org Ken Burris Sales Manager kburris@auvsi.org Dave Donahoe Sales Manager ddonahoe@auvsi.org Wes Morrison Sales Coordinator wmorrison@auvsi.org

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Karen Aho, a freelance writer in western Massachusetts, reports and writes on science, business and housing. She can be reached at k.aho@msn.com.

Rich Tuttle is a longtime aerospace and defense journalist and contributor to Mission Critical.

INDEX OF ADVERTISERS CTIA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Fischer Connectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 FLIR Systems, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Integrated Microwave Technologies, Inc. (IMT) . . . . . . . . . 27 iRobot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Front Cover

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Spotlight EMILY Makes Waves in Southern California

Mission Critical is published four times a year as an official publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Contents of the articles are the sole opinions of the authors and do not necessarily express the policies or opinion of the publisher, editor, AUVSI or any entity of the U.S. government. Materials may not be reproduced without written permission. All advertising will be subject to publisher’s approval and advertisers will agree to indemnify and relieve publisher of loss or claims resulting from advertising contents. Annual subscription and back issue/ reprint requests may be addressed to AUVSI.

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EDITOR’S MESSAGE

Apprehension, Appreciation for Public Safety UAS The use of unmanned systems by public safety officials is one of those areas that strikes the general public as a mixed blessing.

Brett Davis Vice President of Communications and Publications, Editor

‘

Public opinion about public safety and police use of UAS will likely change over time as more examples come to light.

’

Most everyone favors the use of robots for examining traffic accidents; searching for missing persons; and monitoring fires, disasters and the like. The biggest concerns enter in when people fear they will be used for wide, long-term surveillance.

On Page 8, writer Rich Tuttle checks in with the Arlington, Texas, police department, which has been flying small quadrotor UAS for a year, showing the types of ways that police actually use them.

The department owns two Leptron helicopters but has only actually deployed them twice, once over the scene of a car accident and once for an active shooter situation, the type of activity that doesn’t seem to upset the public. It could likely have done more, but until the spring of 2013 was limited to training and evaluation flights.

It does plan to do more in the future, however, as the department plans to acquire more UAS. Even with the limited use they’ve had so far, they’ve proven to be cheaper and more flexible than manned aircraft.

Public opinion about public safety and police use of UAS will likely change over time as more examples come to light, but there is also some evidence that the problem may not be an overwhelming challenge, at least in some areas.

Recently, North Dakota’s UAS Research Compliance Committee, which researches privacy and ethical issues related to unmanned aircraft, conducted a survey of nearly 700 residents in 16 northern counties in the state.

According to the preliminary findings, most uses of unmanned aircraft, including for public safety and law enforcement, find approval, often by overwhelming majorities. For police use, specifically, the only area that dropped was related to long-term surveillance. For the type of uses to which agencies such as Arlington County put them, the residents surveyed don’t disapprove.

Oddly enough, really the only area that met with more disapproval than approval is is an area that many feel will be inevitable — package delivery. Amazon may want to bring you books or movies via UAS, but the residents of North Dakota, at least, are more comfortable with public safety uses than in getting the latest mystery novel delivered to their door.

The researchers are still puzzling this out, but they believe the concern is related to privacy. If this holds true, we may end up seeing more public safety UAS than Amazon ones in the future.

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Boston Engineering Wins Grant for BIOSwimmer Waltham, Massachusetts, company Boston Engineering announced in late June that it has been awarded $200,00 in grants to advance the development of its BIOSwimmer autonomous underwater vehicle, which is used in port and harbor security.

Boston Engineering’s BIOSwimmer mimics how a fish moves through water for motion.

Photo courtesy John F. Williams/U.S. Navy.

The grant is available through the program START, which is a $6 million program administered by MassVentures to help small businesses in Massachusetts.

The company is one of four to gain stage two funding based on its progress toward commercialization after phase one.

“We are honored to be part of a small group of companies selected for the follow-on START grant, and we look forward to continuing our strong relationship with MassVentures,” says Mark Smithers, cofounder and chief technology officer of Boston Engineering. “Massachusetts’ commitment to cultivating an environment of innovation and commercialization for growing businesses like Boston Engineering helps to expand the state’s economy and improve growth opportunities for its vibrant workforce.”

BIOSwimmer uses biomimicry to mechanically and dynamically move through the water like a fish. The unmanned underwater vehicle can address gaps in military and security applications in the maritime environment, according to a company press release, such as inspecting ships, sports and conducting infrastructure searches more rapidly.

“We are driven to advance underwater robotics, and we are refining capabilities that address critical security, safety, and exploration challenges for government and commercial markets,” says Michael Rufo, director of Boston Engineering’s Advanced Systems Group. “The START grant provides us with an added capability to focus our technology on the greatest areas of impact.”

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Blighter Introduces Rapid Deployment Surveillance System for Security Hot Spots Blighter Surveillance Systems, a British electronic-scanning radar and sensor solution provider, has developed an e-scan radar and camera surveillance system, called Blighter Scout, for deployment in border security missions and other security purposes.

Equipped with the Blighter Revolution 360 Passive Electronic Scanning Array radar, low light camera, thermal imaging system and an integrated radar tracker, Blighter Scout is specifically built for fast vehicle mounting and field deployment.

“Blighter Scout enables security forces to deploy our surveillance platform to exactly where it’s needed, for example, to monitor a hot spot on an extensive border or to follow intruder routes as they adapt to the seasons or in reaction to ground interdiction,” says Mark Radford, CEO of Blighter Surveillance Systems.

Blighter Scout has the capability to identify small and slow-moving targets because of the radar’s coactive frequency-modulated continuouswave Doppler fast-scan processing.

The radar can detect a walking person at 7.4 kilometers (4.6 miles) or a large moving vehicle at 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) and cue the camera system to follow and identify targets.

The beam coverage can go up to

The Blighter Scout can be used in border security missions. Photo courtesy Blighter Surveillance Systems.

40-degrees and can operate in hilly or mountainous areas, scanning hill tops and valleys.

The surveillance system can integrate with various camera systems.

The standard Scout comes with Chess Dynamics’ Hawkeye electro-optic platform featuring the Piranha MRTV or LRTV high-sensitivity color daylight TV cameras with an option for cooled or uncooled thermal imagers.

The Blighter Scout radar and camera surveillance system are integrated and controlled through the BlighterView HMI 2 command and control software platform signaling the autocueing with manual override and allows the camera system to follow an intruder as soon as the radar picks up the cue to the target location.

Robots Aid in World Cup Security Bedford, Massaschusetts, company iRobot had its robots used by Brazilian security forces during the 2014 World Cup through a $7.2 million purchase made in 2013.

The country bought 30 explosive ordnance disposal robots that operated in the 12 different World Cup stadiums. The models sent to Brazil could go up staircases, use their twometer manipulator arm on objects and can be radio controlled from up to 800 meters away.

The systems also have a disruptor feature, which can shoot rubber bullets or water at an object.

IRobot is providing three years of

There were 30 iRobot PackBots performing security measures at the 2014 World Cup. Photo courtesy iRobot Corp.

technical support through the contact.

The country also plans on using the robots for the 2016 Olympic games.

The 2014 World Cup was secured by 157,000 military and police agents.

ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS

DARPA Announces Next Phase of Robotics Challenge, Marries Technology, Biology for National Security to see significant innovation.”

There are 11 finalist teams in the competition after a trial event held in December 2013. New teams may also join the competition, which will be held at Pomona’s 480-acre Fairplex.

NEW DIVISION

Team KAIST’s robot from the 2013 trials. Photo courtesy DARPA.

In June, DARPA announced that California will host its DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals from 5-6 June, 2015, in Pomona. Teams there will compete for $2 million, which will be awarded to whomever best demonstrates humansupervised robots used for a disaster response mission.

“Six months ago at the DRC Trials, we began physically testing humansupervised robots against disasterrelevant tasks. Their impressive performance gave us the confidence to raise the bar,” says Dr. Gill Pratt, DRC program manager. “A year from now at the DRC Finals, we will push the tech-

nology even further.”

The teams will face new challenges, like not being connected to power cords or tethers, human operators not being allowed to intervene if the robot gets stuck, heavier weight on the robot’s speed by the scoring judges, and communications that are intermittent and degraded.

“For the first time, teams will be empowered to exploit cloud and crowdaugmented robotics, two highly promising research areas that allow onsite operators to leverage remote data, computing and human resources,” says Pratt. “These research areas are in their infancy, but after the DRC Finals we hope

This spring, the agency also announced that it has created a new division, called the Biological Technologies Office, that will look at the intersection of physical sciences and biological systems. By exploring these disparate areas at once, DARPA hopes to exploit the disciplines to create next-generation technologies for national security missions.

“The Biological Technologies Office will advance and expand on a number of earlier DARPA programs that made preliminary inroads into the bio-technological frontier,” says Geoff Ling, named

by DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar to be the first director of BTO. “We’ve been developing the technological building blocks, we’ve been analyzing our results, and now we’re saying publicly to the research and development community, ‘We are ready to start turning the resulting knowledge into practical tools and capabilities.’”

The office’s work expands on past research done under DARPA’s Defense Sciences and Microsystems Technology offices. The office will also manage new programs, like the Hand Proprioception and Touch Interfaces program, which focuses on haptics, and the Reliable Neural-Interface Technology program, which is looking to add smarts to military uniforms and body armor. It will also house the Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics program, which seeks to use artificial intelligence to protect and mitigate against biological threats.

“Before BTO, DARPA had a handful of biologists, neuroscientists, engineers and the like interested in synthesizing their work but distributed across different offices,” Ling says. “Now we’re under one roof, so to speak, and looking to attract a new community of scholars who will bring a host of new ideas at the intersection of traditional and emerging disciplines.”

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in

public Safety

The unmanned systems industry is committed to providing America’s public safety professionals with tools to do their jobs as safely as possible, while helping them save time, save money and even save lives.

2009 A UAS was used to stem a massive wildfire spreading across Alaska, taking infrared images of the fire at night to identify hotspots in the darkness and providing firefighters situational awareness

125+ U.S. law enforcement agencies

In 2014, a UAS helped map the fire boundaries and identify 15 hotspots by flying over a wildfire on Alaska’s Kenai peninsula

have adopted using unmanned ground robots to reduce the risk to officers and the public

88% of the public support UAS use in search-

The average cost of a small UAS is comparable to the price of a patrol car with standard police gear.

and-rescue operations

unmanned systems can help ... survey large areas for missing persons Identify wildfire hotspots Provide aerial support in inclement weather Support tactical and dangerous operations enable post-disaster assessment Respond to dangerous spills of hazardous materials

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FAST FACTS

safe and efficient $10,000

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office spent nearly $10,000 on a manned aerial survey of a landfill to determine the increase in waste. The same survey was completed for a mere $200 with an unmanned aircraft.

MANNED AERIAL SURVEY

$200

UNMANNED AERIAL SURVEY

UAS safely gather vital information about fire conditions and can send that information to firefighters on the ground quickly.

18,000+ law enforcement agencies in the U.S.,

more than 3%

30,000+

do not currently utilize aviation assets daily

fire departments in the U.S. UAS can be an asset to

OPERATIONAL COST COMPARISON

$200-$400 per hour

uas

manned systems

these fire personnel

$25-$75 per hour

Each year, U.S. state and local governments spend millions on search and rescue, disaster preparedness, law enforcement, fire prevention and other critical services. Unmanned systems could help accomplish those tasks more efficiently, saving time, money and lives.

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Arlington Police Department in Texas uses Leptron Avengers as public safety tools. All photos courtesy APD Police Office of Communications.

Over the Heart of Texas

Arlington Police Department Racks up a Year of Leptron Flights

By Rich Tuttle

Texas’ Arlington Police Department has been flying a pair of Leptron Avenger unmanned aerial systems for about a year, and with some success. The APD hasn’t said much about operational aspects of its UAS program, but the 11-pound unmanned helicopters have been used “on two occasions, once for a traffic fatality and once during an active shooter” situation, according Sgt. Jeffrey Houston of the department’s media office.

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The missions fit the profile previously announced by the APD, which includes looking for missing persons, clearing highway crash scenes and assessing damage in the wake of severe weather.

The APD’s Avengers were among security tools on hand for the 2011 Super Bowl at Cowboys Stadium. They could have conducted surveillance flights in the event of some kind of terrorist activity, but fortunately the need never arose.

Until March 2013, when the Federal Aviation Administration allowed the APD to fly the Avengers in the Dallas-Fort Worth airspace for public safety purposes, the department was restricted to training and evaluation flights in a specific area.

APD in 2012 asked the FAA several times for permission to fly the UAS outside the training area but was turned down each time, according to the Fort Worth StarTelegram. It wanted to demonstrate the Avengers at an FBI conference, use them to assess fire damage in North Arlington and help search for a missing person, the paper said.

COMPLEX AIRSPACE APD wasn’t the first police department to get an FAA certificate of authorization for unmanned aircraft, but it was the first larger agency to use them in complex airspace, says Suzan H. Cogswell, the department’s operations analyst.

Arlington sits between Dallas and Fort Worth, and the DFW airport is the fifth most active in the United States. The most experienced user of UAS is the Mesa County, Colo., sheriff’s department, Cogswell says.

Among other large cities operating UAS for similar purposes are Houston and Miami-Dade.

The APD considers itself in the forefront of current public safety UAS operations, but it is also doing research on future aspects. One area it’s looking into is search and rescue, specifically communications between a UAS team and a ground team, and the potential utility of object identification algorithms “that say ‘this is a toothbrush, or this is a jacket or a hat.’”

ADP Officer Steve Dollar, SUAS pilot, walking to launch site during routine winter flight exercise.

Cogswell says the APD is “eager to encourage other law enforcement agencies to embrace [UAS] technology. We truly believe it can provide important information during critical incidents and as a force multiplier during search-and-rescue operations and natural disasters. We have not even begun to experience all the ways that UAS [can] impact community safety.”

She says the department advocates a new look at the way the FAA and other stakeholders think of airspace below 400 feet, or even “below 200 feet, where most small UAS operations occur.”

The Avengers usually fly at 80 feet and sometimes lower. “We continue to assert that current case law is sufficient to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights of our citizens,” she says.

The Avengers will remain on duty for the next two years or so, after which the APD will move to newer types, Cogswell says. The Avenger was chosen because it can handle the high winds common in Texas, is American made and has good safety features.

The Arlington Police Deparment wants to focus future research on search-and-rescue missions.

“It’s a super machine. It performs really well,” says Cogswell, who was involved in the decision to acquire it.

But, she says, newer models are smaller, more turnkey, and have built-in camera systems.

“In the context of every-day use in law enforcement, that type of set up is going to work better,” she says. If the APD could get whatever it wanted, she says, it would have “one in every sergeant’s trunk.”

All of which means the department will be ready for an additional asset in a couple of years, and a request for proposals will be issued.

The Leptrons were acquired on a sole-source basis.

Leptron, of Golden, Colo., says its battery-powered vehicles appeal to police departments, because they can be deployed in less than five minutes and feature a video package that can “create the ultimate surveillance or accident photography.”

The company was formed in MISSION CRITICAL

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2006 by John Oakley, CEO and founder, and Scott Heath, president.

Customers range from local police departments to federal agencies.

“The only thing we do is helicopters and vertical technology,” says Oakley.

Police departments use vertical takeoff and landing as well as fixedwing UAS, but VTOL types have the edge in terms of overall success, says Dan Schwarzbach, CEO and executive director of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association, Frederick, Maryland. The most suc-

cessful of these, he says, are specifically oriented to law enforcement.

In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Schwarzbach says, contractors tried unsuccessfully to sell military-grade equipment, including manned helicopters, to the law enforcement community. It didn’t work for several reasons, one of which was public perception — people just didn’t like the idea of police departments using military gear.

When the contractors got the message, airborne law enforcement “blossomed,” Schwarzbach says.

Connect 2 Innovation

It’s the same today with UAS, he says. With American military involvement in the Middle East declining, at least for now, UAS makers are looking for new markets, and public safety is a big one, although still well behind precision agriculture, according to a recent AUVSI study. But once again, “they’re trying to sell us militarygrade equipment.”

When contractors “start coming to this part of the industry and asking what’s actually needed,” the light will go on, Schwarzbach says.

Among companies that already have “stepped up to the plate big time” in terms of vertical lift UAS for police duties, Schwarzbach says, are AeroVironment and Draganfly Innovations. He says their products are popular because the companies are sensitive to police needs.

AeroVironment’s Qube VTOL model is based on its Shrike military UAS, but the name Qube makes it easier for police departments to sell to city councils, Schwarzbach says. “What’s more innocuous than Qube?”

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The Arlington Police Department, like most others, is aware of such issues and is careful to emphasize that it uses its unmanned helicopters only during critical events — which even then can be a hard sell because of negative public perceptions of military “drones.”

“Our [Leptron] helicopters are not drones,” Sgt. Christopher Cook of the APD media office says in a video on the department’s website.

They can only be flown during daylight hours and within the COA space. “They carry consumer-grade video and photo equipment that you can purchase at a local retailer.”

Once a UAS is requested by a commander in the field, Cook says, it must be driven to the scene.

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SUAS pilot, Officer Don Kingen, handing a preflight checklist to a fellow officer.

“We have to then notify air traffic control of our exact coordinates in longitude and latitude of where we will be flying the equipment.”

The Avengers must fly under 400 feet, within line of sight and “will not be used for routine patrol,” Cook says. “They will not carry weapons, they will not issue citations, they will not be involved in vehicle pursuits, and they will not be conducting arbitrary surveillance operations.”

The Leptrons “have less than an hour of flight time,” Cook says.

“If we were ever to lose control between the helicopter and the remote, there is a sophisticated navigation device onboard that would force the helicopter to land in the exact spot where it took off.”

And, he says, they “can be operated at a fraction of the cost” of the manned fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters traditionally flown by police aviation units.

To ensure there’s no doubt about the APD’s position on UAS, APD Chief Will Johnson says, “We do this through holding the Constitution at the level that we all know that we should — protecting everybody’s privacy, making sure that this is an asset for the community [and] not an intrusion into peoples’ civil liberties.”

Cogswell says the APD complies with the Texas Privacy Act, which says, in part, that “a person commits an offense if the person uses an unmanned aircraft to capture an image of an individual

or privately owned real property in this state with the intent to conduct surveillance on the individual or property captured in the image.”

Privacy, says ALEA’s Schwarzbach, is taking the place of airspace as the big issue for unmanned aircraft. Airspace issues are being addressed with the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization act of a couple of years ago, he says.

The issue now is not so much with the vehicles themselves, but with the use of the data they collect — what law enforcement will do with it, how long it can be retained and who else might see it, Schwarzbach says. “That’s really where the debate ought to be, and that’s where we are trying to focus the debate.”  MISSION CRITICAL

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ROBOTS to the

RESCUE SEATTLE

Using unmanned systems and robotics for security and police measures is growing in popularity. The industry’s potential truly covers the entire globe. Here is a look at the widespread locations using these systems to make the world a safer place.

BRANFORD, CONNECTICUT

The Seattle Police Department wanted to use UAS to monitor criminal activity across the city, however public outcry caused a ban on the devices.

A quadcopter helped battle a fire at Stone Creek Quarry when old blast mats — heavy rubber sheets placed over holes to contain explosions — caught fire. A firefighter sent in his UAS to stream video back to the pilot’s smartphone to safely locate the fire, which could’ve reached a storage unit that contained dynamite and other explosives.

NEW YORK The New York Police Department announced they will start using UAS to patrol crime.

NOGALES, ARIZONA The U.S. Border Patrol is using remote controlled robots to monitor tunnels used by drug cartels and smugglers to import drugs, weapons and people from Mexico into the U.S.

BRAZIL

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA Colombia’s National Police are considering adding unmanned aircraft to their tools to aid in curbing crimes.

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Massachusettsbased company iRobot sent PackBots to help government and police officers to patrol the 12 World Cup stadiums.

STATE OF THE ART

TEHRAN, IRAN RTS Labs has developed an UAS, which can be used to help rescue a drowning swimmer using bright lights, thermal sensors and a built-in camera to stream videos to rescuers on shore.

POHANG, SOUTH KOREA Three prisons tested a robotic “guard� to help lessen the workload of prison guards. The five-foot-tall system used cameras and microphones to patrol hallways and monitor for suspicious and dangerous behavior, including preventing such things as suicide attempts.

The unarmed robots could summon human guards when needed.

TOKYO

Japanese firm Secom has developed a UAS that people can buy for protection against home intruders that will be equipped with a small security camera and is capable of calling the police.

KINSHASA, CONGO

Two large robots, powered by solar panels and are equipped with rotating chests and surveillance cameras that record the flow of vehicles, are being used to direct traffic and pedestrians in place of police officers, which commuters say have impacted the traffic positively.

PUTRAJAYA, MALAYSIA The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency is using UAS to fight smuggling and crime at sea. Smugglers often use boats filled with contraband cigarettes to attract authorities to the ship to allow other boats carrying more cargo to slip through. UAS will help to monitor this kind of activity for maritime security.

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TECHNOLOGY GAP

The Nose Knows

Robot Sniffs Out Disasters With Olfactory Ability Long before robots, first responders have multiplied their forces with another kind of companion. German shepherds, Dalmatians, Saint Bernards and other trained canines have used their noses to find skiers in avalanches, missing children, drowning victims and the like. And it’s this acute sense of smell that has given search-and-rescue dogs a leg up — but current research may one day challenge that.

Postgraduate researcher Blanca Lorena Villarreal from Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico developed a sensor that will allow robots to use an electronic nose that could aid in search-and-rescue missions.

Currently, the system can use artificial intelligence algorithms to detect the odor of alcohol, but it can be programmed to sniff out a host of smells, like blood, sweat, urine or other chemicals.

Lorena Villareal with CONACYT’s robot, outfitted with smelling technology.

Photo courtesy Investigación y Desarrollo.

This is hardly the first time scientists have tried to get a robot to sniff out an area.

In 2004, NASA got into the artificial nose game, creating a sensor that could seek out ammonia — a compound that keeps the International Space Station habitable but is poisonous in higher concentrations.

NASA’s Electronic Nose, or ENose, could detect the particles at one part per million, when the human nose can only detect it at 50 parts per million. The nose used polymer films designed to conduct electricity that when absorbed changed the amount of electricity they could conduct, and each film reacted to a different polymer.

Last year, researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia set out to create a similar smell-enhanced robot. They chose to use insects as the model for how to detect scents.

However, the robot could only store up to two scents at a time in its memory.

The nuclear industry tried to employ scent sensors on mobile robots as early as 1984 to sense if there were certain chemicals in the air. Getting these robots to wipe their “noses” clean and have a fresh sense of smell after stimulation proved more difficult than offer-

Lorena Villarreal based her robotic sensing methods on how humans perceive smells.

“We note that, biologically, animals perceive the direction of an odor using two characteristics,” she says. “It comes at different concentrations to the nostrils and because it is appreciated with a time difference. These two factors can identify from which direction a certain aroma comes.”

ing it some Febreze.

Lorena Villarreal optimized her electronic nose to be able to perceive specific smells and reassess each situation anew. It sends its data to a computer that analyzes the origin and direction of the aroma in real time.

“Unlike other olfactory systems, this has the feature that in each cycle of ventilation the air chamber empties, making sensors ready for a new measurement,” she says, meaning each new cycle, the robot can reassess the direction and origin of an odor.

She outfitted her sensor for testing on a robot from Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology, or CONACYT. Next, Lorena Villarreal wants to focus on further developing her odor algorithms so robots can make their own decisions based on what they sense.

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Daniel Stilwell VaCAS River Recon USV A team of researchers from the Virginia Center for Autonomous Systems (VaCAS) at Virginia Tech and the Naval Postgraduate School has been developing a high-speed unmanned surface vehicle that is capable of operating autonomously in complex tropical riverine systems. Dan Stilwell and Craig Woolsey have led the Virginia Tech effort, while Doug Horner has led the NPS effort. The autonomous riverine craft could be useful not only for the military, but also for first responders in the wake of a disaster that involves flooding or rivers. The system is intended to autonomously navigate a waterway, making maps above and below the water as it goes.

Q: What is the main benefit of an unmanned river reconnaissance boat?

A: We have been working with naval special warfare boat teams. They have, at times, a very dangerous mission. The primary defense for a riverine craft is speed, so the typical response to a threat is to move out of harm’s way as fast as possible.

To operate safely at high speeds, human operators need an accurate and up-to-date map of the surface and subsurface environment. One goal of our technology is to acquire that map using autonomous vehicle systems so that no human need be in harms way.

Some of the technology in our sensing and autonomous system can be transitioned to human-operated boats. For example, the sensing and map-building technology can be integrated in a human-operated boat without the autonomy system.

That way the operator receives some meaningful benefit from the technology before the autonomy system is fully mature.

Q: What sort of users would be most likely to benefit from such technology, military, police or others?

A: In addition to applications for naval special boat teams, the autonomous riverine craft technology would be useful for any sort of humanitarian disaster relief mission where operating in complex 16

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waterways is required, such as for flooding.

The technology can also be useful for remote environmental monitoring. Because the autonomous riverine craft has a very long endurance and can operate in poorly known and dynamic environments, it can perform monitoring and mapping missions that are prohibitively difficult for human operators, such as a remote coastal estuary where the navigable waterway changes dramatically with each tidal cycle. Even for somewhat pedestrian applications where environmental mapping means only mowing the lawn, autonomous vehicles produce excellent results. They can do dull [tasks] all day without the data holidays that might arise from distracted human operators.

Q: What are the main benefits provided by unmanned surface vehicles compared with unmanned air or ground vehicles?

A: We are addressing applications in tropical riverine systems where the primary mode of transportation is on the river. The tree canopy would prevent UAS operations, and ground vehicles would not have access. In general, autonomous boats are also useful for applications where a longterm presence is necessary. With a large payload weight fraction dedicated to fuel, an autonomous boat can display impressive endurance, at least at low speeds.

Q: What navigation challenges are posed by rivers as opposed to larger bodies of water?

A: The riverine systems we address are very complex and dynamic. We might be passing through a section of the river that is only slightly wider than the beam of the boat.

On an ocean or even a large river, one needs to identify and respond to a handful of discrete options, such a shipping traffic and channel markers. In a tropical riverine system, we find that something new pops up continuously. In fact, we presume that that the boat will occasionally exhibit maneuvers that even human pilots find challenging, such as backing out of routes that were found to be impassible. We also need to find and avoid objects that are flowing down river.

Q: To what extent is automation important for such a system?

A: It’s critical. We cannot preselect waypoints, because the riverine systems we address are poorly known and accurate maps do not exist. In fact, even in the continental U.S., we have encountered maps for well known waterways that contain significant errors, and our riverine craft would have run aground had we not been generating guidance commands based on maps that we were building in real time.

Q: What is the biggest challenge in creating that automation?

A: There are a bunch of challenges.

Some of them are the standard systems engineering challenges that appear in all autonomous vehicles systems: the sensing, mapping, guidance, autopilot, and mission

Q&A management systems need to work correctly and together. There are significant challenges in using forward-looking sonar in a riverine system for subsea sensing. Our colleagues at the Naval Postgraduate School have been making great strides in this area.

There are also some neat challenges that arise from using a shallow-draft boat in a complex waterway. It is notable that we cannot adapt typical planning and guidance algorithms used for ground robots and autonomous cars. Unlike a car, shallow-draft vessels display significant sideslip when turning, especially a low speeds. And there is nothing on a boat that corresponds to a brake.

A boat continues to move when the engine is turned off. We had to rethink how we do modeling, control, guidance and planning for vehicle systems, such as a boat, where vehicle dynamics cannot be ignored. Not only did we solve these problems for our specific application, but our best fundamental contributions to robotic guidance and planning are a result of addressing this challenge.

Q: Do the sensors, above and below water, operate at different speeds?

A: We use a laser line scanner for sensing the surface environment, and our colleagues at the Naval Postgraduate School developed a forward-looking sonar capability for the subsurface environment.

The laser line scanner works well at relatively long range, and it generates very reliable maps with few false returns. Underwater sensing is much more difficult. It operates at a slower rate and at shorter ranges.

Maps produced from underwater sensing are less reliable due to a river being a very challenging acoustic environment.

Virginia Tech and the Naval Postgraduate School’s high-speed autonomous USV. Photo courtesy Daniel Stilwell.

Q: What sort of testing did you do in creating your craft?

A: Some of our work has been in the Pearl River, which is near Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

It’s an excellent environment for testing technology that is intended for tropical riverine systems. It’s also where the special boat teams train.

Locally, we tested our systems in Claytor Lake, near Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus. Claytor Lake, which is a hydroelectric impoundment of the New River, has many small inlets that are challenging places for a boat to maneuver and, therefore, excellent places to exercise our sensing and autonomy system.

Q: How fast were you able to go?

A: We run our boat at seven knots.

The need for underwater sensing prevents us from going much faster.

For routine mapping, seven knots is fast enough. In the future we would like to go much faster.

Q: What is the status of your system now, and are there any future plans for it?

A: Our research project, funded by the Office of Naval Research, is

nearly complete. We have been able to demonstrate all of the autonomous behaviors that [we] proposed to develop, and we will conclude with one final full-scale demonstration this summer.

Q: What do you see as the biggest technical challenge facing such systems in the future?

A: Reliability and robustness in unstructured environments remains the central challenge for autonomous vehicle systems, such as ours, that truly operate without human oversight. In general, these systems are not yet sufficiently mature for adoption by the user community.

Although we can demonstrate impressive capabilities, we know that there are unanticipated settings and situations for which our autonomous vehicle system will behave poorly. Addressing this is partly a research question: How do we formally verify and validate complex autonomous systems, and is it partly a process of maturing advanced technology by taking it to the field and finding new ways to break it? In this project, we believe that we have contributed successfully to both approaches.

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the

SECURING World

WITH

ROBOTS For more than the last decade, first responders have been using robots and unmanned systems in dangerous situations. Here’s a look at the many missions on which they have been used.

2001

IRobot’s PackBot was used by New York’s law enforcement to search the wreckage of the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

South Korea commissioned Samsung to build autonomous border guards that could detect intruders in the zone between North and South Korea at a four-kilometer range.

2007

The police in Liverpool, United Kingdom, acquired Germanmade Microdrones for surveillance operations. The Staffordshire police deployed one that year at the 2007 V Festival.

China developed police robots for use at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, including the Dragon Guard X3 portable robot developed by Shanghai’s Grandar Robotics.

2008

New Jersey state police used robots to attach air bags to dozens of cars and trucks that were dumped into the lower Hackensack River over the years, polluting the northern New Jersey waterway with gasoline, oil and antifreeze. The bags lifted the vehicles to the surface so they could be removed.

2009

2010 18

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The U.K.’s Merceyside police used an Air Robot in the country’s first arrest of a car thief using an unmanned aircraft.

TIMELINE

2014 The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol used wireless cameraequipped robots to remotely navigate the tunnels and storm drainage systems that smugglers use to sneak drugs, guns and people across the U.S.-Mexico border.

2013 2012 Police in Grand Forks, North Dakota, started regularly using unmanned aircraft for search-and-rescue and crime scene applications.

Robots by iRobot and QinetiQ North America were used by law enforcement in the search for the Tsarnaev brothers, wanted for the Boston Marathon bombing.

ATLAS, a DARPA-funded search-and-rescue robot created by Boston Dynamics, was unveiled to the public and used by several teams in DARPA’s Robotics Challenge Trials.

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Cash for Robots

Federal Grants Key to Getting Robots on the Force While there are many technological advances that have yet to be realized that keep robots and unmanned aircraft from being as commonplace as other law enforcement technology, there is perhaps no bigger gap to bridge in their adoption than funding.

Police agencies have been hit hard by the economic downturn of the past six years. A report by the Community Oriented Policing Services, housed inside the U.S. Department of Justice, details how declining budgets across the board have forced public safety agencies to slash their safety operating budgets.

The technology officers use has not gone unscathed in this economic climate.

“Around the country, cashstrapped communities are looking for any way to boost efficiency and cut spending,” states the report. “As indicated in several of the current surveys, many law enforcement agencies have been forced to reduce or entirely cut their budgets for technology.”

Given the state of play, grants have been instrumental in allowing agencies to make purchases such as law enforcement robots, which can add safety and serve as a force multiplier for a unit.

Ground robotics companies like iRobot have partnered with groups like online law enforcement information provider Police One, which hosts the website PoliceGrantsHelp.com. The website offers general grant writing assistance for police and specifically helps them get 510 PackBots, both the multimission and HAZMAT versions; the much larger 710 Ko-

The Eufala, Alabama, Police SWAT unit shield an officer, fourth from the right, who is controlling a ground robot transmitting a video feed during a simulated school shooting exercise.

Photo courtesy UNEQ Consulting.

bra, which can either be multimission or explosive ordnance disposal; and the throwable 110 FirstLook.

What should police officers and other law enforcement personnel do to obtain a grant? The website recommends first putting together a cost estimate for a project and making sure that if the agency uses a grant to fulfill that requirement that it doesn’t also request it as a line item in that year’s budget.

“There is a clause attached to most federal and state grants that state [sic] you cannot supplant funds,” says the website. “This means that if your budget has a line item for a new vehicle and you get a grant, which gives you that vehicle, you will still have to buy that vehicle. You can not [sic] transfer the money intended for that vehicle to another line item and use the money budgeted for something else.”

The organization recommends using generic terms when creat-

ing a law enforcement budget, like equipment, so if a grant does fulfill a requirement, that money can go toward another item instead of a duplicate system.

Then the organization recommends an agency put together a team of those that will benefit from the proposed new technology to gain their input. Then, any agency that would like a grant needs to get a Duns University Numbering System to be recognized by the federal government, which can take up to two days. Departments must also participate in the National Incident Management System.

Grants in the United States are primarily offered between two agencies, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Once an agency finds a program that fits its grant needs, it typically takes about four to six months after the application deadline to get the funds.

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A Vigilant robot patrolling a food court.

Photo courtesy Gamma 2 Robotics.

Is Rosie Ready to Go on Patrol?

By Karen Aho

Security robots for the home are still essentially surveillance systems on wheels, remotely operable and often viewed as “cool for the kids.” Some — like the popular Spykee — are even sold in the toy section.

But that’s hardly a knock. The nimble little bots can maneuver impressively around a house, even tackling stairs, with a smartphone or tablet on their back. Priced at under $300, they allow a homeowner to log in from the office, or the beach, to see his property in real time. An owner can even speak via Wi-Fi, i.e.: “Get out of my house.

The police are on the way.”

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No, the fact that home-security technology has budged little in recent years, with the major security players still reliant on stationary cameras and motion sensors, speaks more to the challenges inherent in developing complex, autonomous robots.

And it makes this year all the more impressive, as security robotics are finally expected to begin rolling out for use in the commercial sector, possibly providing a glimpse of what’s to come — someday — in home security.

G4S Technology, the largest private security agency in the world,

set the tone in June when it welcomed “Bob” to the patrol team at its corporate headquarters in England. Developed by the University of Birmingham as part of a European Union technology consortium, Bob became the first autonomous security robot to be put to use in the private sector.

Equipped with cameras and 3-D scanners, Bob learned his environment, mapped his surroundings and recognized changes over time.

When he got low on juice, Bob glided over to a docking station and plugged himself in.

“Bob is good at driving around and monitoring objects, so is perfect for a job in security as a night or day watchman where he can monitor what is going on in his immediate surroundings,” Dr. Nick Hawes, a university lead on the project, told reporters at the launch.

At the same time, Bob’s sibling Werner was sent to a nursing home in Austria, where he conducted a

similar patrol but also played simple games with residents, an attempt to foster a human connection.

Both were employed for short, trial research periods.

Shaped like a thin but pleasantly curvaceous person, the so-called “Linda Robots,” named after another sibling, stand 5 feet, 10 inches tall and taper up to a glass “head” with two friendly blue and white blinking eyes. The robots can speak and will ask for help when needed, for instance if an object has blocked their path. They do not carry weapons. Videos of Bob making his rounds show employees instinctively beckoning “Hi, Bob,” when he rolls into a room.

GUARD OF THE FUTURE? The robots’ shifts came on the heels of a 2013 University of Oxford study that put the odds of security guards being replaced by robots within a decade or two at a jobnumbing 84 percent. Those are higher odds than the 0.3 percent researchers gave for therapists and mechanical supervisors, but little better than the 99 percent assigned to telemarketers and insurance writers, among others.

A K5 robot patrols outside. Photo courtesy Knightscope.

A Vigilant robot in an office setting.

Still, it’s no surprise that some of the first autonomous robots are being sent to do the work of security guards, a job that demands a scrupulous attention to detail even while enduring hours of boredom.

After all, studies at Las Vegas casinos showed people watching the monitors lose focus after just 15 minutes.

“Human beings are not wired to stay focused on nothing for long periods of time, and that’s where the big challenges come in,” says Jim Gunderson, cofounder and president of Gamma 2 Robotics, in Denver. “And 99.9 percent of the time, nothing ever happens.”

Bob the security robot is all business. Photo courtesy University of Birmingham.

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23

enough to be authoritative without appearing frightening. Able to operate in the dark, the Vigilant can detect motion along with slight changes in temperature or air quality.

Images and other data are relayed wirelessly, and the Vigilant can respond to voice or wireless commands. Additional devices include sonar, gas detectors, lights, alarms, and RFID and biometric readers. It can run an eight- to 16hour shift, after which it needs to be recharged for eight hours.

A base unit costs between $40,000 and $45,000 — the equivalent of six to nine months of a security guard’s salary and benefits.

Prototypes have run for five years, but Gunderson expects customers will upgrade in three or four years.

The Vigilant is not designed to be armed, and Gunderson voids the warranty if customers try to integrate weapons. “Robots don’t really have that judgment,” he says.

His target market is night patrol at commercial properties, all those warehouses, data centers and shopping malls after they’re closed.

Robots can cover the ground yet won’t be called upon to interact with people, which remains challenging.

A Gamma 2 Robotics Vigilant robot on patrol.

THE VIGILANT When Gunderson and his wife set out to design an artificially intelligent robot, one of the very first questions they sought to answer was which work a robot was best suited to fill. Where would the demand be in the private market? The answer: commercial security, more specifically, the night shift.

In the United States, security companies experience a 300 percent annual turnover on the graveyard shift. The job doesn’t pay well, yet applicants are required to pass background checks and upend their sleep and social life. Even during the reces24

MISSION CRITICAL

sion, the number of unfilled positions for night security guards in the United States continually hovered at 2,000, Gunderson said.

“It’s the hardest shift for security companies to fill,” Gunderson says.

“Robots should be doing the dull, dangerous, dirty work, as we call it.”

“The major thing is the companies are in crisis right now,” he says.

“They’re very aware that one way to solve that problem is with the use of security robot.”

THE KNIGHTSCOPE K5 Out in Silicon Valley, another company has broader — and more controversial — aspirations.

Gunderson’s solution, Vigilant Robots, is on track to be the first commercially deployed AI security robot. The orders are in, and the first batch is slated to roll onto the job by fall.

The Vigilant is a four foot tall cylinder that tapers to a point, big

Knightscope, which expects to roll out its K5 Autonomous Data Machine next year, boldly proclaims its mission is to cut crime by 50 percent.

Like the Vigilant, the K5 is equipped with a camera, sensors and the ability to transmit live

data while autonomously navigating a property. At four feet tall and shaped like a bullet, it has been likened to Star Wars’ R2D2.

A Knightscope K5 security robot patrols a parking lot.

Unlike Gamma 2 Robotics, however, Knightscope refers to future possible partnerships with police and shows video of the K5 gliding through parking lots snapping pictures of license plates and people’s faces. The K5 will record sound and possibly match its voluminous data against social media.

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, told The New York Times the K5 “is like R2-D2’s evil twin.”

“Once you enter public space and collect images and sound recordings, you have entered another realm,” Rotenberg told the newspaper. “This is the kind of pervasive surveillance that has put people on edge.”

Knightscope’s Stacy Dean Stephens, a former police officer in Texas, pointed out that the K5 can only patrol on private property and that the customers who’ve expressed interest are corporate and private security companies, particularly those needing outdoor patrol. Back in February, Knightscope said at least 30 companies were on its wait list.

“We only operate on private property due to regulations surrounding autonomous machines on public roads,” Stephens said in an email interview. “Our vision, however, is that we will ultimately be able to predict and prevent crime in every community.”

Sales are scheduled for the end of this year, with deployment in early 2015. Customers can subscribe to the service for $6.25 per hour. Facial recognition software is in development, and possibilities include live-streaming data to social media or other public venues to

harness the power of collaboration.

Ultimately, Stephens says, people will become accustomed to roving robotic cameras as he says they already have to stationary cameras.

“Security cameras attracted attention when first deployed in public, and now they capture almost everything we do — from pumping gas, visiting the ATM, shopping, dining and so on,” he says. “It is accepted that they are there to help us feel safer and to gather evidence in the event of an unfortunate incident.”

Knightscope uses the Boston Marathon bombing as an example of where a robotic system could sort and pair data from surveillance cameras and social media far more efficiently than humans.

IF ONLY A ROBOT HAD BEEN THERE Gunderson likes to track security breaches that might have been prevented if only a good robot had been on duty.

There was the teenager who crawled through a hole in a fence

at 4 a.m. on an early morning this spring, took an elevator to the top of 1 World Trade Center, and snuck by a security guard, who may have fallen asleep, to climb the spire at the top and snap photos. He wasn’t hurt.

At each of those three places — the fence, the elevator, the guard desk — a robot could easily have captured the small and seemingly innocuous anomaly and alerted a human guard for help.

Then there was the thief this summer who made off with $300,000 in electronic cigarettes from a Florida warehouse by cutting through the wall of an adjacent auto shop.

“If there’d been a robot in there, they wouldn’t have found out Monday morning, as they did.

They would have found out within minutes, probably before he even got all the way through the wall,” Gunderson says. “A robot detects motion, it sees the heat of a person, and then it’s immediately sending an alarm out.”  MISSION CRITICAL

25

EMILY Makes Waves, Saves Lives in Southern California

EMILY takes to the air in California surf. All photos courtesy the County of Los Angeles Fire Department.

For the past few years, the County of Los Angeles Fire Department, which also overseas 72 miles of coastline, has had a new helper.

map glacial lakes and another that is aiding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in studying storms.

She’s a good swimmer, she doesn’t need to eat or take vacations, and she has helped lifeguards save people from drowning. She can swim at speeds up to 22 mph.

Her name is EMILY, for Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard, and she is built by Hydronalix.

But L.A. County probably has the most experience with the basic system, having worked with it since early 2011, when EMILY was still a prototype.

EMILY is a remote controlled buoy that can move though rip currents and swift water to reach struggling swimmers to provide flotation until a rescuer arrives, deliver life jackets or even pull a recovery rescue line up to 800 yards through even heavy surf and strong currents.

Several iterations of EMILY have appeared since the company first debuted the technology, including one that has been to the highest lakes in the Tibetan mountains to 26

MISSION CRITICAL

“Basically, it just happened that we met Tony Mulligan from Hydronalix,” says Fernando Boiteux, section chief for the The original EMILY and a more advanced version.

SPOTLIGHT

County of Los Angeles Fire Department. “He came and said, what do you think about this? At the beginning I was pretty skeptical about it, but said I would take a look.

He basically brought a prototype and he kept improving, improving, improving, and I said, that really has a potential to help us in rescue operations.”

They think it’s a great idea. … It’s gotten a lot of good feedback.”

Mulligan then applied for a Department of Defense grant for first responders, and in 2012 L.A. County’s fire department purchased two EMILY systems for testing and evaluation.

“In the last couple of years, we’ve started having contraband that we’ve

EMILY may also grow into a new role in Southern California.

Boiteux has been investigating the use of U.S. Navy funds to equip it with sonar and some degree of autonomy, which would enable it to help fight a new threat on the California beaches.

never had before,” as drug smugglers and human traffickers are driving boats up to the beach to transfer their cargo to waiting trucks.

“Sometimes it’s two a week, sometimes two a month, but what’s changing now is those people are all armed,” he says. “That’s another way I would envision using this, this EMILY with surveillance capability … so I don’t have to put personnel in danger.”

“In February or March of 2012, we started using it in a pretty regular way up in the Malibu area,” Boiteux says.

EMILY drew attention immediately, and the department did more than 30 interviews, including from international media. That actually led to something of a backlash.

“There were people making complaints with the union that this was going to take jobs away from lifeguards,” Boiteux says.

“We had to slow down. … That was one of the more unfortunate things that happened. I’ve always envisioned it as a tool, a tool that can make your job easier. If I could have a tool that can help somebody that’s struggling out there, release the panic that person is going through until a lifeguard gets there, why not?”

EMILY is most effective with a trained water professional, he says — it’s not autonomous and needs a talented operator.

Resistance has lessened in recent days, and in general the public has a favorable opinion of the technology, he says.

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TESTING, TESTING

Before Disaster Strikes Train in Disaster City

When testing an unmanned system, whether aircraft, ground robot or maritime system, it’s often useful to demonstrate them in the type of environment they will actually encounter.

That can be problematic when the systems are intended to be used in the wake of disasters. Where do you find an overturned train, a collapsed building, a demolished road?

Several places, as it turns out.

There are various sites around the country where just these sorts of disasters have been staged so that first responders and companies can operate in a somewhat realistic environment.

One of the most famous is Disaster City, a 52-acre facility in College Station, Texas, located adjacent to the Texas A&M Engineering Extension’s Brayton Fire Training Field. The site features an overturned passenger train, collapsed single-family homes and office buildings, a collapsed strip mall and no fewer than three rubble piles.

Among those who have trained at Disaster City are members of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, or CRASAR, which is headed

by Dr. Robin Murphy, author of the book “Disaster Robotics,” recently published by MIT Press. Ironically, CRASAR had organized a training event in 2011 that was attended by Japanese rescue officials who were at Disaster City when the Fukushima tsunami and earthquake struck.

The researchers, led by Satoshi Tadakoro of the International Rescue Systems Institute, returned to Japan to help and were followed by members of CRASAR and others who deployed various types of robots to survey the disaster and help with search-and-rescue efforts.

Another group that trains there is Texas Task Force 1, a search-and28

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An overturned train at Kansas’ Calamity City. AUVSI photo.

rescue team that has aided in the aftermaths of 9/11 and the Hurricanes Katrina, Ike and Sandy.

Kansas has its own training disaster area, Crisis City, near Salina, which is operated by the Kansas Division of Emergency Management.

The site, which has its own Facebook page, also features a derailed train, rubble piles, a collapsed building and includes a tower, an urban village, a downed aircraft, a pipeline rescue setup and more.

Crisis City, once the home of a World War II prisoner of war camp, opened in 2009. It has demonstrated unmanned aircraft flights to the public when it has conducted open house events.

There are other facilities as well, including Wright State University’s Calamityville in Ohio, which features hazardous materials, a collapsed village and two aircraft mishaps, and one of the newest and largest, Guardian Centers, a massive, 830-acre disaster preparedness area that CNN dubbed “doomsday Disneyland.”

The site, a former Cold War missile factory in Perry, Georgia, includes a mock subway with real cars donated

by Washington, D.C.’s Metro system,

urban flooding zones and multi-story collapsed structures.

Such facilities are important both for conducting exercises and for experimenting with concepts, says Murphy.

“Exercises should be conducted in realistic settings and with the expected manpower and procedures in order to allow users to gain familiarity with the systems and form a favorable opinion because they can clearly see how it will be used,” Murphy writes in an email to Mission Critical. “Exercises accelerate adoption.”

Concept experimentation in such locations is important, she says, because it accelerates system development and reduces the risk of investing in improvements that may have a poor cost-benefit ratio.

“Facilities which are staged to represent the degree of difficulty and deconstruction of the physical environment are key, but also having actual users trying to use the technology to accomplish a real mission with no simplifications to make it easier for the unmanned system is equally important in determining gaps and in getting meaningful feedback.”

END USERS

A view from a VideoRay ROV operated by the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office in Duluth, Minnesota. All photos courtesy the sheriff’s office.

ROVs Help Reduce Risk in Underwater Searches

By David Phillips

Editor’s note: David Phillips is the undersheriff of the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota. He is also a consultant and trainer for underwater robotics and sonar, which has involved him in many projects around the world.

He shared with Mission Critical, his experience as a end user of ROVs in search-and-recovery operations.

Twenty-five years ago in the early part of my law enforcement career, it was common business practice to utilize drag bars with hooks to locate drowning victims.

Searches would go on for days or even weeks with a roll of the dice on whether a victim would be recovered

by drag bars or would float due to natural decomposition. This method was very imprecise and certainly not the way that anyone would want a loved one recovered.

Exhausted families would hold vigil day after day as rescue boats would paw the rivers or lakes endlessly. It would not be uncommon for families of victims to find other solutions in their desperation, such as psychics. The same law enforcement that would examine a body inch by inch if found on land had no way to effectively document scenes on the seafloor, and true examination of the cadaver could only start once the body was hauled up in the boat.

It was also common for every agency whose jurisdiction had lakes or rivers to form their own dive teams. This introduces a great deal of MISSION CRITICAL

29

to work as needed for recovery, thus reducing their bottom time.

Our partner agency, Wisconsin’s Superior-Douglas County Dive Team is well equipped and trained to handle the occasional recovery we may need if we are not able to do so with an ROV. The high-resolution cameras available on our VideoRays allow for video and still image documentation of the scene as found on the seafloor, without any concern for bottom time. BlueView multibeam sonars are never removed from our ROVs, as they provide excellent target acquisition and assist navigation even in zero visibility.

Our goal as an agency has been to acquire and utilize equipment that is highly portable and can be easily operated by deputies or rescue squad members to provide a search pattern with detailed coverage and the ability to locate, relocate and verify targets of interest.

More underwater views from the VideoRay ROV.

risk for an agency, because if you do a high-risk activity very rarely, you are setting the stage for accidents.

We have a saying in our agency, the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office in Duluth, Minnesota, that no one dies or gets hurt looking for a dead guy.

It seems that the rule for public safety is to start off with the best of equipment and intentions until budget cuts impact training or attrition sucks the membership and activity level out of the team. Such was the experience of my agency.

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Our current underwater search MISSION CRITICAL

strategy is a hybrid model that utilizes technology, mutual-aid agreements and even commercial divers if needed. The foundation of any decent water search begins with witness sightings of the point last seen, where a victim was seen going under the surface. Marine Sonic HDS side-scan sonar are used for wide area searches, and VideoRay Pro 4 remotely operated vehicles with M-900 130 sonar are used to truth targets of interest or hammer the point last seen.

By utilizing technology on the front end, we remove divers from wide area searches and put them

As an agency, we continue to look for technologies for underwater search and recovery and are excited with recent developments.

The ability to run such patterns with DVL [Doppler velocity log] and tools such as VideoRay CoPilot by SeeByte are amazing steps forward. And sonar manufacturers are coming up with elegant ways of stitching multibeam imagery together, thus providing the ultimate deliverable in an underwater investigation.

Technologies that were only available to the military a few years ago are now more and more available. One thing that will never change regardless of technology is we need people to be safe in and around water. If not, we will always need the point last seen or intelligence on the general area to begin our search with the technologies we have on hand.

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Mining Automated e in ROV Timel s Power Line g in or it Mon Inside this issue:

If your company has technology in any of these arenas, then you can’t afford to miss this opportunity — book your advertising space today!

Companies #-L: David Donahoe at +1 571 482 3205 or ddonahoe@auvsi.org Companies M-Z: Ken Burris at +1 571 482 3204 or kburris@auvsi.org

MISSION CRITICAL

, US

USA

VOLUME 3 NO.2 • May 2013 • AUVSI • 2700 South Quincy S t r e e t , S u i t e 4 0 0 , A r l i n g t o n , VA 22206, USA

Automated Driving: February 2015 Edition

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, Arlington

Unmanned system s fight fires

2014

Commercial UAS: November 2014 Edition

Robots aid Japa

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Summer 2011

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