Mission Critical, Summer 2011

V O L U M E 1 N O . 2 • S U M M E R 2 0 1 1 • A U V S I • 2 7 0 0 S o u t h Q u i n c y S t r e e t , S u i t e 4 0 0 , A r l i n g t o n , VA 2 2 2 0 6 , U S A

Robots aid Japan Unmanned systems fight fires

Robots help police Inside this issue:

First responder robots Mission Critical

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FLIR’s Tau 640

Actual size

The Route to the Future Introducing the new FLIR Tau 640 – the world’s first commercially available 640 × 480 resolution, 17-micron thermal imager.

Smaller than many lower resolution cameras, the Tau 640 is the highresolution thermal imaging camera core of the future that you can have today.

The best just got better … again.

The world leader in thermal imaging

For more information, call

877.773.3547 www.flir.com.

or visit

Promoting and Supporting Unmanned Systems and Robotics Across the Globe

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Over 450 Exhibiting Companies 30+ Countries Represented More than 6,500 Attendees • 4 Days of Sessions and Exhibits!

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CONTENTS V O L U M E 1 N O . 2 • S U M M E R 2 0 1 1

UK FIRST RESPONDER BOTS Though U.K. first responders have welcomed unmanned ground vehicles to the fray, uncertainty still surrounds the adoption of unmanned air vehicles for police work and fire and rescue.

Page 9 6 ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS

16 STATE OF THE ART

Who’s doing what, where

New products and technology

25 Q & A

28 TIMELINE

Tracing technology

A leading expert talks search and rescue

On the Cover: The LAPD’s BatCat robot, a one-of-a-kind roboticized Caterpillar Telehandler, can splinter houses to gain access to barricaded suspects. Photo courtesy LAPD.

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37 FUTURE JOBS Making the industry work

38 POP CULTURE CORNER The entertainment world’s view

39 TECHNOLOGY GAP What needs to be done

40 UNCANNY VALLEY

Page 18

Concerns about new technology

aftershock How unmanned systems of all kinds were called upon to aid in the fallout of the recent earthquake in Japan.

41 TESTING, TESTING Peek at ongoing research

42 SPOTLIGHT

Page 30

A look at the LAPD’s BatCat

44 END USERS The people moving the technology

A BURNING NEED

Advertiser Index

Robots come to the rescue on the wildfire fighting front.

FLIR Systems, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Cover Northwest UAV Propulsion Systems . . . . . . . . 1 AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America . . . 2 QinetiQ North America . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Telerob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 AUVSI’s Mission Critical . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

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. Mission Critical is provided with AUVSI membership.

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AUVSI Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Northrop Grumman . . . . . . . . . . Back Cover

President’s message Michael Toscano

Editorial Vice President of Publications and Communications, Editor Brett Davis davis@auvsi.org Managing Editor Danielle Lucey lucey@auvsi.org Associate Editor Stephanie Levy slevy@auvsi.org Contributing Writers Lindsay Voss voss@auvsi.org Yvonne Headington

Advertising Senior Advertising and Marketing Manager Lisa Fick fick@auvsi.org +1 571 255 7779

A publication of

President and CEO Michael Toscano Executive Vice President Gretchen West AUVSI Headquarters 2700 South Quincy Street, Suite 400 Arlington, VA 22206 USA +1 703 845 9671 info@auvsi.org www.auvsi.org

W

elcome to the second issue of Mission Critical, published quarterly by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

The first issue examined the world of intelligent transportation. This issue takes a look at the unmanned systems and robotics needs of first responders, including police and firefighters, as well as the challenges that stand in their way.

Unmanned systems have long been described as being able to tackle the dull, dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs that put people in harm’s way. Many jobs faced by first responders fit this description to a T — well, they’re rarely dull, but they’re often dirty, difficult and dangerous.

Police officers would much rather endanger a robot than their fellow officers when it comes to entering a tense situation, such as trying to evict a gunman in a hostage situation. In a recent case in Florida, police sent a robot into the home of a well-armed man who had threatened to shoot himself and anyone who entered the house. The police sent a robot into the house and, true to his word, the man shot the robot. What would have been a tragedy had a human been involved only resulted in a trip to the repair shop for the robot.

Police in the United Kingdom have actually had a long relationship with unmanned systems and robots; early ground robots rolled out with the military in the early 1970s, and police began using them a decade later in response to terrorist bombings. A look at the United Kingdom’s experience with police robots, both successful and less so, begins on Page 9.

The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the resulting problems at a nuclear plant really illustrate the dirty, difficult and dangerous work. Robots that are capable of handling combat zones were sent into an area of deadly radiation, and some will be so damaged they can’t be used again. But, like the Florida shooting, it’s better for that to happen to a robot than to a person. See our story on the Japanese situation on Page 18.

Finally, firefighting is yet another example of how people can use unmanned systems to stay out of harm’s way while still taking on risky missions. Unmanned aircraft, particularly small ones, could be invaluable for firefighters on the ground, helping them keep abreast of dangerous conditions. While many hurdles remain before this becomes a reality, AUVSI is committed to helping make it happen. See that story on Page 30.

Mission Critical is published quarterly on AUVSI’s website and is free to AUVSI members. Nonmembers and members alike can connect to the MagCloud service and order print copies.

Upcoming issues of Mission Critical will take a look at home and healthcare robotics and exploration, including that done by oil and gas companies. We hope you’ll continue this journey with us.

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Essential Components

Essential Components

Part of EOD Robotics’ RAFT kit for Northrop Grumman’s Remotec ground ‘bots.

AUVSI photo.

This will grab you: Tool kits for first responder ‘bots The Rail Attached Flexible Tool kit, developed by EOD Robotics Inc. to fit on Northrop Grumman’s Remotec ground vehicle, allows SWAT team robots to disable vehicles, break car windows, cut away suicide bomber vests or rescue injured people while still being able to use its gripper arms. The system was developed for the Santa Clara County Sheriff ’s Office in EOD Robotics’ hometown in California, but has been marketed more widely, including being shown by Northrop Grumman itself at the recent Force Protection Equipment Demonstration VIII in Virginia.

The tool system includes precision-machined grippers, cutting devices, a rescue hook, illuminators, deflators, bag rippers and window breakers, and more components are on the way. “All RAFT components are designed to be used by EOD and SWAT operators, not engineers in a warm, safe laboratory,” the company says.

Speaking of grabbing things, Stratom of Boulder, Colo., also sells after-market kits aimed at expanding the flexibility of robots like the iRobot SUGV and PackBot, the QinetiQ North America Talon and the Remotec FA6.

The company markets the Automatic Robotic Tool Changer Project, which allows a robot to grab the tool it needs without assistance from its operator. “No longer will the UGV need to make multiple trips between the operator and the threat to have tools changed out manually,” the company says.

It also sells the Adaptive Specialty Probe toolkit. Its components — a probing tool, a three-tined rake, a hook and a cutting/piercing tool — may look like things that could be useful in a garden, but they’re serious business for first responders and warfighters that need to deal with explosive devices.

Stratom’s automatic tool changer means you won’t have to go out there and help this robot swap tools. Photo courtesy Stratom.

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Telerob’s Telemax on display at the TelerobCobham booth in Brazil at the LAAD 2011 show. AUVSI photo.

Cobham’s Telerob buy signals new market entry U.K.-based Cobham bought Germany robot maker Telerob earlier this year for €78 million in cash, saying the combination of that company and San Diego-based camera maker RVision will help it move further into the homeland security market.

Telerob builds medium and heavyweight anti-explosive robots and is a market leader in Asia and the Middle East. The company has made some inroads into the U.S. market, including in Arizona and Atlanta, where it was purchased last year for use at Atlanta’s airport.

“Cobham will be able to integrate its technology into Telerob systems, including communications equipment and sensors that it already provides for the EOD market, along with specialist cameras” built by RVision, the company said in announcing the buy.

“Telerob brings distinctive explosive ordnance device technology and international routes to market that are highly complementary to ours,” says Andy Stevens, Cob-

ham’s CEO. “This acquisition will enable us to enhance the product range we can offer to homeland security markets.”

manned vehicles, helmet-mounted applications, handheld thermal viewers, unattended ground and security systems, and small turrets and gimbals,” the company says. The Tau 640 has already found a home in Lockheed Martin’s Desert Hawk III, AeroVironment’s Puma and Cloud Cap Technology’s T2 gimbal.

Spain’s Proytecsa: Big, bigger

I see you: FLIR’s Tau 640 imager

Proytecsa of Spain worked with the Spanish national police and explosive disposal special unit to develop its robots, the AUNAV and the larger Super AUNAV, which has an arm that can reach up to 5 meters (nearly 17 feet) high.

FLIR’s Tau 640 thermal imaging camera packs the electronics of the company’s Tau 320 into a body that’s nearly 25 percent smaller but which boasts four times as many pixels.

The robots are in use in Spain, Mexico, Angola, Iran and other countries, according to a spokesman. The smallest of the pair, the AUNAV, was also on display at the recent LAAD 2011 show in Brazil.

The camera, intended to be packaged into surveillance systems, has multiple lens options, a high-speed camera connection and high shock tolerance. It’s not a finished product in itself but is intended to be integrated into other products or platforms.

The larger Super AUNAV was developed to “deal with any vehicle bombs,” the company says, as it van move almost any vehicle and use its arm’s “jaws” to get inside. The Super AUNAV’s arm can lift up to 700 kilograms (1,500 pounds) at full extension.

FLIR’s tiny Tau 640. Image courtesy FLIR.

“Small, light and easy to integrate, Tau is the ideal thermal camera core for un-

Proytecsa’s AUNAV in Brazil. Remember, this is the little one. AUVSI photo.

ICOR’s MK3 Caliber, now downsized for the T5 Small SWAT Robot. AUVSI photo.

ICOR launches smaller bot, new command and control unit Canada’s ICOR Technology has introduced a new, smaller member of its line of EOD and SWAT robots.

The Caliber T5 Small SWAT Robot is based on the design of the MK3 Caliber EOD robot, but it has a smaller chassis and a single arm versus the MK3’s dual-arm system. It weighs just 64 kilograms (140 pounds) and can fit in the trunk of a car, making it useful for deploying on buses, trains and planes, according to the company. (Should you wish to go smaller still, there’s the Mini-Caliber, which weighs only 1.8 kilograms.) Meanwhile, the MK3 is in use by law enforcement agencies in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the company says.

On 1 June, the company also launched its new Caliber command and control unit, a portable, 28-pound system in a rugged, water-resistant case. “Bomb disposal technicians and SWAT operators will appreciate the 15-inch LCD bright-daylight readable screen with integrated crosshairs for aiming disrupters, as well as the optional picture-in-picture function,” the company says.

The unit has four firing circuits for multiple weapons, tools and attachments.

An RS-232 interface for detector data throughput is incorporated into the Caliber robot and its CCU for use with various sensors and detectors.

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Essential Components — continued from Page 7

would generate a negative lift force and move downward. At inclines greater than seven degrees, the robot would do the opposite and rise up.

The closest Mission Critical will ever get to a swimsuit edition: This robot’s tiltable head is powered by servo motors packed in a latex sock and wrapped in a spandex swimsuit. Photo courtesy Daniel Goldman, Georgia Tech.

“The ability to control the vertical position of the robot by modulating its head inclination opens up avenues for further research into developing robots more capable of maneuvering in complex environments, like debris-filled areas produced by an earthquake or landslide,” says Goldman.

A schematic of ADI’s new ADIS16407 iSensor inertial measurement unit. Image courtesy ADI.

Ten degrees of freedom from ADI Analog Devices has released its ADIS16407 iSensor inertial measurement unit, combining a tri-axis gyroscope, tri-axis accelerometer, tri-axis magnetometer and a pressure sensor in one package into what it calls a 10-degrees-of-freedom sensor aimed at first responders.

Getting a head in the world of snake bots

this year’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai.

The Georgia Institute of Technology this spring built a robot that, much like a snake in shape and movement, can swim through granular debris — an asset in recent search and rescue situations like the earthquakes in Haiti, New Zealand and Japan. However, until now these robots typically lacked the ability to move their “heads” so the robot could better scope its environment.

“The biological inspiration for our sandswimming robot is the sandfish lizard, which inhabits the Sahara desert in Africa and rapidly buries into and swims within sand,” explains Goldman. “We were intrigued by the sandfish lizard’s wedgeshaped head that forms an angle of 140 degrees with the horizontal plane, and we thought its head might be responsible for or be contributing to the animal’s ability to maneuver in complex environments.”

“We discovered that by changing the shape of the sand-swimming robot’s head or by tilting its head up and down slightly, we could control the robot’s vertical motion as it swam forward within a granular medium,” says Daniel Goldman, an assistant professor at the Georgia Tech School of Physics.

The Georgia Tech study was presented at 8

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To test this theory, the researchers attached a wedge-shaped block of wood to the front end of their robot and then examined if its vertical motion could be controlled only by changing the inclination of its head.

They tested at five separate degrees and determined that when the robot’s head was positioned at 155 degrees that it

The package integrates all necessary sensors for an unmanned system into one product with a simple interface. Each sensor has its own dynamic compensation formulas, increasing the accuracy of the overall sensor measurements.

“Emergency first responders, unmanned vehicles and precision autonomous instruments often require the merging of multiple sensors to accurately track location in office buildings, warehouses, tunnels, caves, mines, ‘urban canyons’ and other GPS-denied environments,” says Bob Scannell, iSensor business development manager. “All existing 10-DoF IMUs for these applications are significantly larger, with less factory calibration and do not adequately address price-performance requirements. The ADIS16407 combines all of these sensors in a single package, fully integrated and calibrated at the factory, at a low system price.”

UGVs OK with UK police, UAS up in the air By yvonne headington

U

nmanned systems have worked alongside United Kingdom police since the early 1980s, when London’s Metropolitan Police Service went up against Irish Republican Army bombers.

The threats have changed over time, as radical Islamic factions have made sometimes stunning attacks, such as 2005 suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people and injured more than 700. The robots have changed too, becoming more sophisticated and accepted. But while certain technologies, such as specialist unmanned ground vehicles, have found a place in the inventory of first responders, the picture for air systems is mixed.

UGV — supplied by Remotec, a U.K. subsidiary of Northrop Grumman — and the U.S. iRobot Packbot. The Wheelbarrow remote explosive ordnance device UGV was first deployed to Northern Ireland with the British Army in 1972. The latest Mk9 model provides a number of new features, including digital communications for improved quality and security, a user-friendly command console with a touchscreen facility and joystick control, a wireless hand controller for local remote control and preset positions for greater

functionality.

Meanwhile, the iRobot PackBot, similar in size to an infantry soldiers’ Bergen backpack, is ideal for “getting into small spaces.” The unit is robust and can withstand falling from windows and down stairs, as well as being submerged in up to 3 feet of water.

A senior MPS explosives officer, who did not wish to be identified, confirmed that the EOU responds on average to around 700 incidents annually.

Fighting the bombers With more than 32,000 full-time police officers and a net annual operational expenditure of nearly 3.7 billion British pounds ($6.1 billion), London’s Metropolitan Police Service is the largest force in the U.K. and one of the biggest in the world. The MPS is unique in the U.K. in having a dedicated bomb disposal capability.

“In London, we have our own explosives officers. It’s different for the rest of the country. They don’t have dedicated resources but can call on army expertise,” says an MPS spokesman.

The MPS has one Explosive Ordnance Unit, comprising a number of teams, which also include personnel from the City of London Police. The teams currently employ the Wheelbarrow Mk9

London’s Metropolitan Police Service employs a Remotec Wheelbarrow Mk9 as a part of its EOD force. Photo courtesy Northrop Grumman Corp.

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Robot police — continued from Page 9 “These can range from a hand grenade buried in a garden, old wartime ordnance, suspicious items of mail, a bag left on a bus through to suspicious unattended vehicles,” he says. There are also preplanned operations “such as the recent royal wedding and the [U.S.] presidential visit.” Not all incidents, of course, require the use of robots, and sometimes the robot itself can present a hazard.

An EOU Wheelbarrow was memorably caught on camera on 4 March, 2001, when a bomb, planted in a taxi by a dissident group known as the Real IRA, exploded just after midnight outside the offices of the BBC. The UGV had smashed through a window of the taxi to insert a camera while police officers prepared to carry out a controlled explosion. However, the bomb exploded and destroyed both the taxi and the Wheelbarrow. According to BBC reports, an officer, who was operating the UGV from a distance of some 50 yards, “narrowly escaped serious injury when the robot device was hurled through the air and passed close to him.”

Track-side hazbots The U.K.’s National Rail, in conjunction with the London Fire Brigade, began UGV trials in 2008, using systems supplied by QinetiQ to tackle the particular problem of acetylene cylinder fires. The search for a technical solution to this hazard was prompted by a number of incidents that led to the closure of main line stations in London. In June 2006, for instance, trains were prevented from running through King’s Cross Station for two days following a gas cylinder fire at a nearby construction site.

Network Rail’s spokesman P.J. Taylor explained that the initiative “is jointly funded by Network Rail, Transport for London and the Highways Agency. Two sets of three robots are now in use.” The equipment, operated by the LFB under contract, includes a Talon fitted with a remote thermal probe and video and thermal imaging 10

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London police use the iRobot PackBot, which can be submerged in up to 3 feet of water.

Photo courtesy iRobot Corp.

cameras; a Black Max, an adapted quad bike unit equipped with a video camera and a high-pressure hose; and a Brokk 90, based on an industrial demolition vehicle and roboticized by QinetiQ, which can break down doors and cut through padlocks.

Paul Kidd, LFB’s group manager for hazmat policy and operation procedures, confirmed that the “vehicles were selected

by QinetiQ as they felt they provided the full spectrum of ‘eyes on’ with Talon, ‘water on’ with Black Max, and then a vehicle capable of picking up and moving the cylinder — this being the Brokk 90.”

The danger with rail fires is when acetylene cylinders are subjected to heat and may go exothermic — the gas may become unstable and explode without warning. The cylinders need time to cool, and the LFB’s previous standard practice was to impose a 200-meter hazard zone around the site of a fire for up to 24 hours. Apart from the obvious dangers to firefighters and the public, such incidents can cause major disruption and can result in significant financial penalties for the rail network operator. Deployment of the specialist UGV reduced the time it takes to deal with such incidents, allowing firefighters to declare scenes safe within an average time of three to four hours.

According to Kidd, the main benefit of using a UGV “has to be that an incident commander can get information from within the incident [area] without the need to expose any of our firefighters to the risk posed by heated cylinders. Furthermore, we can get the systems to deploy much closer to a cylinder than we would ever allow a firefighter to approach whilst there is still a chance that a cylinder could fail.”

The problem with deploying QinetiQ’s UGV in London is that the equipment is located outside the capital. The company also provides a support team, which is available on a 24-hour call-out basis. But, as Kidd explained, these teams “may have to travel significant distances to reach some of our incidents.”

The West Midlands Fire Service flies the MD4-200 micro air vehicle under line of sight restrictions. Photo courtesy Microdrones GmbH.

SCAN IT: Scan this barcode with your smartphone to see the MD4-200 in action.

Following scientific advice, there has now been a change in the procedure for dealing with acetylene cylinder-related fires, which says that as long as the cylinder remains unaffected by direct flames, 24-hour cooling is no longer necessary. Thus, situations can now be dealt with more quickly even without robots. However, “there are no plans to abandon the systems. We continue to work with QinetiQ in looking at other uses, as they may very well provide us with

future options in dealing with challenging types of incidents.”

Trailblazing micros The West Midlands Fire Service has led the way in using unmanned air systems with the purchase of an MD4-200 micro-UAS in September 2007. The MD4-200, produced by Microdrones GmbH and supplied in the U.K. by MW Power Systems

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An AirRobot quadrotor hovers over the 2011 AUVSI Day on Capitol Hill. AUVSI photo.

Ltd., was at the time “probably the best system on the market,” according to Andy Cashmore from the WMFS Emergency Response Technical and Operations Support Directorate. “The system was not the cheapest. I would say that 35,000 pounds [$57,600] was around the price we paid, including training for six people and a gold-level service package.”

Cashmore also added that “there was a real drive to also be the first fire and rescue service in the U.K. to operate a system.”

Twelve WMFS operators are currently trained to use the MD4-200 UAV, which is available for deployment day or night.

“It can be requested by any operational officer,” says Cashmore, and, following weather assessments, “we will attend immediately during normal office hours or within an hour out of office hours.”

With a payload of 900 grams (2 pounds), the MD4-200’s utility is restricted by the types and numbers of sensors that can be

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carried. “At the moment, we can only carry one camera at a time,” says Cashmore, “and although we would like to try to attach different sensors for plume analysis, asbestos and radiation, we are struggling to find instruments which are within the payload restrictions.”

Battery life is another limiting factor. The potential flight time of 15 minutes is dependent upon payload and weather, thus “we work on a flight time of 12 minutes.”

Cashmore also pointed out that the microUAS can only fly in wind speeds of 12 mph or less. This particular limitation “has the knock-on affect of negatively influencing the mindset [of users] to the extent that they will not request it if they think there is even a slight breeze.”

The emergency services are not exempt from the rules regulating the operation of UAS and require permission to fly from the Civil Aviation Authority. Cashmore described the process as “rigorous” but adds that the emergency services may find

it easier to adhere to safety regulations because “they will invariably be in control of the area and can restrict access by members of the public.”

Despite the WMFS’s trailblazing employment of UAS, demand for the MD4-200’s services has not been as high as anticipated.

“Whilst it is another tool in the box for our incident commanders, a greater capability would provide the impetus for them to use it more often — if only we had more money,” says Cashmore. Trials of Microdrones’ more capable MD4-1000 had been anticipated but, according Cashmore, “the manufacturers experienced a number of technical issues.”

Safety and privacy A flurry of “Spy in the Sky” media reports followed the deployment of a micro-UAS

by Staffordshire Police during the two-day V Festival music concert in August 2007.

This was the first time that a UAS had been

Strathclyde officers operated an E-Swift Eye UAV and developed procedures for using the system in cooperation with other emergency services.

Photo courtesy Cyber Flight.

used at a major public outdoor event. In response to a Freedom of Information request, submitted by the author and campaigner Heather Brooke, the chief inspector of Staffordshire Police confirmed that the deployment involved a demonstration of MW Power’s micro-drone (likely the MD4-200). “Staffordshire Police had no direction or control over the demonstration but gave MW Power the criteria of the demonstration, that it should take place over the largely non-populated areas of the campsites, car parks and arena. No directed surveillance of any individuals took place.”

Press coverage suggested that the UAS’ main purpose was to deter would-be

thieves. However, wider concerns over public safety and privacy have led to a change in the rules that apply to UAS operations. Before 1 Jan., 2010, only small unmanned aircraft weighing 7 kilograms (15.4 pounds) or greater had to seek specific CAA permission to fly, as smaller UAS tended to fall within the definition of model aircraft flown by hobbyists in open or well-defined spaces. However, as the scope for deploying sophisticated micro-systems increases, regulations have been tightened.

In essence, the changes introduced within CAP722 (the CAA document that deals with the operation of UAS in U.K. airspace) address the need to protect people and structures. Operators “must maintain direct unaided visual contact with the aircraft sufficient to monitor its flight path in relation to other aircraft, persons, vehicles, vessels and structures for the purpose of avoiding collisions,” the document reads.

The parameters for line-of-sight operation are set at 500 meters (1,640 feet) horizontally and 400 feet vertically, and the flight should be conducted within a specified distance (50 meters/164 feet) from anyone or anything. There are additional restric-

tions on the use of UAS, irrespective of mass, for surveillance purposes, and permission is invariably required from the CAA. The Merseyside Police hit the headlines when they fell foul of the changes to the new regulations. On 26 Jan., 2010, an AirRobot quadrotor, weighing just less than 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds), was successfully used to assist with the arrest of a car thief.

According to a press notice released at the time, “the UAV’s thermal imaging camera was particularly helpful in identifying where one of the suspects was hiding. Live footage was being viewed by the UAV’s operator in the mobile command vehicle close to the scene, and they were able to then direct patrols on the ground to where the suspect was concealed.” However, it later emerged that the Merseyside Police had been unaware of changes in CAA regulations, leading to press reports that the drone was being used illegally.

Mark Lawrence, a director of AirRobot’s U.K. subsidiary, was present at the time of the arrest and maintains that the UAS was flown within the visual line of sight parameters set by the CAA and that “no laws were broken at all.” There is no suggestion

BAE Systems’ Herti UAV at the Warton Aerodrome in Lancashire. Photo courtesy BAE Systems.

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Robot police — continued from Page 13 that public safety was compromised during the incident, and Mark Lawrence said he remains bitter about the subsequent negative press reports following what was effectively a successful operational outcome. The Merseyside Police no longer operates a UAV, and some suggest, unconfirmed, that the system was lost in a river.

Not so sold on UAS Essex Police purchased an AirRobot in May 2008 at a cost of 22,000 pounds ($36,200).

According to press officer Roger Grimwade, the quadrotor “was purchased for crowd safety at events such as the V Festival and for crime prevention.” The UAS was potentially seen as a cost-effective alternative to using other resources; the cost of deploying a helicopter for the duration of a two-day music festival, for instance, would be prohibitive. However the AirRobot was never deployed operationally “whilst clarification was obtained regarding licensing legislation.” It seems that that the allure of UAS technology has been lost on the Essex Police, and the force’s AirRobot is being sold.

Similarly Strathclyde Police, the largest of Scotland’s eight police forces, decided against the operational use of UAS following ostensibly successful trials of Cyber Flight’s E-Swift Eye, a sturdy 2-kilogram micro-UAS, in 2007 and 2008. According to Cyber Flight Director Terry Carpenter, the project was initiated by an officer in Strathclyde’s Research and Evaluation Department “who had personal experience and knowledge of the issues surrounding search over inland open waters and open ground in the West Highland areas of Scotland.”

A press notice dated 29 Aug., 2007, described Strathclyde’s Deputy Chief Constable Ricky Gray as being enthusiastic about the introduction of the high-tech equipment and the subsequent decision not to deploy E-Swift Eye “came as a complete surprise,” says Carpenter. The UAS had received “a very positive evaluation

report,” but the project was put on hold following the arrival of a new chief constable. Carpenter is philosophical: “Innovation and development within the police does not happen very fast.”

Civil autonomy In 2007, BAE Systems announced that the company was working with police authorities and other law enforcement agencies toward the introduction of autonomous UAS for civil applications as part of the South Coast Project. At the time, BAE Systems commented that, “2012 is the date currently accepted by ASTREA [Aerial Support to Regional Enforcement Agencies] and other bodies concerned with the development and certification of UAVs as the earliest achievable date for UAVs to operate in controlled airspace.” This timeframe is contested. According to the CAA “no one (that we are aware of) is remotely close to producing a workable detect/sense and avoid system. Whilst some areas of industry claim that they will have a system by 2012, it is more likely to be 2015 or even 2020 at the earliest.”

It seems that that the allure of UAS technology has been lost on the Essex Police, and the force’s AirRobot is being sold.

the surveillance potential of such systems, the fight against crime is cited as “of more interest.” Additionally, UAS could be used more effectively than a helicopter for such purposes as traffic monitoring and public safety at major events, such as the London 2012 Olympics.

Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas of the Kent Police and SCP lead confirmed that the group had looked at possible uses for autonomous UAS “in the expectation that BAE might be flying a developmental system in the near future. However, this did not come to pass, and so the SCP is in hibernation at present.”

Lack of funding seems to have stalled the SCP. “BAE couldn’t fund it,” says Thomas, “and the partners had no money.”

Then there are the technological airworthiness challenges posed by autonomous systems. Thomas described the current market as “very immature,” with little understanding of the benefits such technologies could offer. He added that “the regulator — the CAA — is not permissive, but then there is no established business with an airworthy vehicle beating a path to their door.”

Efforts over the past couple of years to establish some form of cooperation with French and Dutch counterparts, as well as endeavors to secure European Union funding for a demonstration site, have not met with success to date.

Further details of the SCP — involving the police forces of Essex, Kent and Merseyside, as well as the Borders Agency, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and HM Revenue & Customs — came to light in January 2010, following a Freedom of Information request by the Guardian newspaper. One of the UAS under consideration was BAE System’s Herti, which has already deployed to Afghanistan with the Royal Air Force.

There are plans to establish a National Police Air Service in order to coordinate countrywide air assets, possibly based on the infrastructure provided by the British Transport Police, which has a national footprint. The NPAS might provide the right forum for revisiting the potential of UAS, but a lack of money, viable technology and public support suggests that there is unlikely to be a wider adoption of these unmanned systems any time soon.

A Guardian article from 23 Jan., 2010, described the SCP aims as “a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.” While a cover note to the Freedom of Information Disclosure document acknowledges

Yvonne Headington is a freelance writer on Defence and Security issues and edits the weekly newsletter Defence News Analysis – A View from London (www.dranda.btinternet.co.uk).

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15

STATE OF THE ART

Search and

Rescue Robots Oslo, Minn.

Costa Mesa, Colo.

After working with a small Draganflyer quadrotor for more than a year, the Costa Mesa County Sheriff’s Office received a certificate of authorization from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to fly the system county-wide.

The University of North Dakota used its ScanEagle to survey the flood-ravaged Red River, which inundated areas of Manitoba, North Dakota and Minnesota.

Times Square, New York

On 1 May, 2010, New York’s major arteria intersection Times Square was completely empty, except for one robot. Sent to investigate a car bomb that some suspected was a terrorist activity, the robot lifted the device out of the car so officials could dismantle it.

U.S. north and south borders Customs and Border Protection has racked up 10,000 flight hours using MQ-9 Predator Bs to survey the borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

28.7 degrees north 88.4 degrees west, offshore the Mississippi River Delta The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 proved to be one of the most high profile situations for underwater robots, when remotely operated vehicles were used to attempt to close off the blowout preventer valves on the rig’s well head.

2 o

N A I b

Haiti After an earthquake crumbled much of Haiti and its capital Port au Prince’s infrastructure, a Global Hawk surveyed the damage, with some reports that it even served as a make shift air traffic control for manned relief planes landing below. U.S. Predator vehicles also helped out overhead. On the ground, robotic pharmaceutical dispensers were also used to get much-needed medicine to those that survived.

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Rio de Janeiro

After a gang shot down a police helicopte Brazil became very interested in using unm to patrol its favelas, or shantytowns. Braz for several Israeli aircraft and smaller indi have been used for such patrols.

Search and rescue robots, once a formative technology, have been responding en masse to global events over the last few years, staking out spots in some of the most dangerous environments. Here’s a look at where they’ve flown, swam and crawled into the line of danger.

L’Aquila, Italy The CRASAR team, based out of Texas A&M, used a quadrotor to inspect the gardens of L’Aquila, Italy, after an earthquake that killed more than 300 people.

al

e

Chandigarh, India Police in this northern India city plan to acquire a Golden Hawk UAS to use for monitoring VIP events, rallies and other public gatherings, the first police unit in the country to adopt the technology. India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation, based in Bangalore, built the system and demonstrated it to Chandigarh police.

The Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea has proven to be anything but, and in 2010 South Korea trialed a Samsung Techwin SGR-A1 autonomous robotic gun turret there that could fire upon intruders from three kilometers away.

Sendai, Japan Air, ground and maritime robots poured into the earthquake-stricken nation of Japan following the devastation of a 9.0-magnitude temblor that hit the northeast coast. UAS, like Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk, played a key role in observing radiation levels at the compromised Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

2.9 degrees north 30.6 degrees west, offshore Sao Luis, Brazil

Nearly two years after Air France Flight 447 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, robotic subs from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution located the flight’s black box recorder and some of the bodies of the 216 passengers and 12 crewmembers on board.

er with a rocket, manned aircraft zil signed a deal igenous aircraft

38th parallel

Queensland, Australia The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation sent its Slocum gliders into floodwaters in Queensland to inspect the state of wildlife after a massive flood in past December 2010 and January 2011.

Greymouth, New Zealand After the Pike River mine collapse, multiple robots were sent down into the hole to see if there was a chance the 29 men inside were alive. The final robot went 1.5 kilometers into the mine until debris from the blast blocked its path. Footage from the robot ended hope that they had survived.

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Aftershock: Unmanned systems help Japan recover from disaster

By Stephanie Levy

“We have an open email system in the company, and folks were saying ‘Hey, we’re roboticists. How come we’re not doing something in Japan?’ earlier in that week,” Trainer says.

Mitigating a meltdown

P

iles of pizza boxes grew higher and higher on any available table space at the iRobot headquarters in Bedford, Mass. Employees turned around in the middle of rush hour traffic to drive back to work and help their colleagues. Sleep was never really an option.

“Our software engineer, I believe, slept under his desk for about an hour and a half,” says iRobot Vice President of Operations Tim Trainer.

The team from iRobot worked through the night after receiving word of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan on 11 March. Japanese national police confirmed more than 15,000 people died in the quake and tsunami that followed, but international media reports have placed the death toll at more than 18,000.

Days after the disaster, residents of the Sendai area learned of a new crisis on their hands — fuel rods at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant began overheating, leading to a release of radioactive materials into the environment. Ultimately, Japanese officials ranked the disaster at level seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale, marking it a larger catastrophe than the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. News of the meltdown quickly went global.

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IRobot sent two different unmanned ground vehicle models to the disaster at Fukushima. The PackBot 510, a 45-pound UGV, “provides visual surveillance and radiation level mapping within all three of the damaged reactor facilities,” Trainer says. The larger 347-pound Warrior 710 robot could move large debris at the disaster site — the Warrior can even carry a PackBot on its back. Both robots can travel up to 800 meters, or approximately one-half mile, depending on the line of sight and operating environment.

In all, it took iRobot 26 hours to ready the robots after receiving the call for help. The robots arrived in Japan on 21 March and immediately went to work in the damaged nuclear plant.

“They are the only robots that are active within the facilities inside the actual reactor units,” Trainer says. “Typically they operate in pairs going in: one providing situational awareness, the other providing radiation tracking.”

To prepare these robots, usually used in combat theater, for the high-radiation nuclear reactors, iRobot also equipped the systems with hazmat sensors that could detect chemical, biological and radiological obstacles. Both systems also had fiberoptic tether capabilities to ensure safe communication.

“There are backup sensors,” Trainer says.

“We understand susceptibility to electronic circuitry as well as to cameras. So the expectation is if we start seeing those anomalies, we can respond.”

Once the robots reached Japan, Trainer says Japanese rescue workers took complete control over their operation. IRobot worked to make that transition as smooth as possible by providing training on how to use the robots to Japanese officials.

“We have our Aware 2 software on the platform,” Trainer says. “It’s more user friendly than the other software. It’s driven by a laptop OCU [operator control unit]. The whole idea there is we knew we wouldn’t be going forward with the robots into a hazardous environment, and we knew the Japanese didn’t have a lot of time to train on them. So we’ve given what we believe is the easiest robots for them to learn how to train on.”

Now, three months after the Tokyo Electric Power Co. started using the robots in the nuclear facility, Trainer says the systems have held up “outstandingly.”

“These robots were not specifically designed for operations in high-radiation environments,” Trainer explains. “We had some concerns with communications, we had some concerns about integrated circuit board susceptibility to radiation, and all of those concerns have not been realized.”

For instance, as of 13 June, iRobot had received word that one of the PackBots successfully detected the highest radiation level measured at Fukushima, 400 millisievers per hour — a quantitative mea-

sure of radiation — inside reactor one.

Typically, nuclear reactor workers average a dose of 20 millisievers per year on the job. Hazardous steam flooded the reactor, but the robot still recorded the data and operated with no adverse effects.

“We were very, very happy with how robust the design is in that environment,” Trainer says.

Even with these recent successes, Trainer says iRobot does not expect to be able to use these specific PackBots and Warrior robots after their missions in Fukushima.

They will have been exposed to too much radiation to be deemed safe for any other environment.

IRobot wasn’t the only company to sent unmanned systems to help with relief efforts inside the Fukushima plant. QinetiQ North America sent modified versions of its Talon robot to help with containment

efforts at the nuclear plant. The robot has a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive detection kit that can identify more than 7,500 environmental hazards. The newly outfitted models also have radiation-resistant cameras, GPS and sensors.

This event has been Talon’s first tour in a highly radioactive environment. It can take radiation readings from inside the plant and stamp them geospatially with its GPS capabilities. TEPCO operated the Talon robot from a remote location to navigate through rubble and map out radiation levels, providing critical data to keep human responders better informed.

QinetiQ also sent its Robotic Appliqué Kits, which turn Bobcat vehicles into unmanned systems in 15 minutes. In addition to vehicle equipment such as extra shovels and grapples, the unmanned technology in the kits includes cameras, night

vision, thermal imagery, microphones, two-way radio systems and radiation sensors. Operators can control the unmanned Bobcats from more than a mile away.

“We believe unmanned systems, such as those we have sent to Japan, can play a critical role in dealing with natural disasters by speeding cleanup efforts without putting lives at risk,” says J.D. Crouch, QinetiQ North America’s Technology solutions group president.

Up in the air, Honeywell Aerospace and French company Helipse have sent unmanned aircraft to help with relief efforts.

Honeywell’s T-Hawk micro air vehicle was used to check radiation levels at the plant. Both the QinetiQ ground robots and Honeywell’s aerial vehicle used radios built by Cobham to relay video from inside the plant.

Helipse’s three unmanned helicopters at

The whole CRASAR-IRS team at Rikuzentakata, Japan.

Photo courtesy Robin Murphy, CRASAR.

Japan disaster — continued from Page 19 the plant are equipped with radiation sensors, infrared thermometers and cameras; the helicopters can fly autonomously for up to one hour.

attack struck Japan, CRASAR Director Robin Murphy says being quickly invited to travel to the disaster site made all the difference.

Since the disaster, Trainer says iRobot has continued to communicate with TEPCO officials at Fukushima over the past three months.

“Our invitation to work with the International Rescue Systems Institute came within three days, and we were ready to go with marine vehicles immediately, but we couldn’t travel until three weeks later,” Murphy says. “We’re often the last resort at a disaster.”

“We were talking daily through April and then probably twice a week through May, and now once a week we have a weekly tag up with our agent in theater,” Trainer says.

Murphy led two different missions in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami.

Murphy documented the experience on her director’s blog for CRASAR.

Radiation and recovery

First, CRASAR worked with a team, including iRobot, to use robots as a surveillance mechanism at Fukushima. As a consultant on the robotic mission into the plant, Murphy stayed 50 miles away from the plant at all times.

At the Center for Robotic Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University, roboticists have been working on unmanned systems as first responders since the Sept.

11 terrorist attacks. But when this natural

Japanese coast guard officials survey findings from a camera on one of the SARbot UUVs. Photo courtesy Robin Murphy, CRASAR.

After a week’s break spent in the United States, Murphy and personnel from the International Rescue Systems Institute, the Applied Environmental and Ocean Sciences Group, SeaBotix and the University of South Florida Center for Ocean Technology returned to the Sendai coastal area to help with port clearing and victim recovery.

Murphy’s crew searched six sites over the course of five days with the help of three remotely operated vehicles: SeaBotix’s SARbot, a Seamor ROV and an Access AC-ROV, which Murphy described in a 25 April blog post as “essentially a camcorder with thrusters,” which “was also used twice in clear water to assess debris in very shallow water. It was fun to literally throw it in the water.”

“The majority of robots associated with the nuclear disaster are ground robots,

which have been hardened through extensive use by the U.S. military,” Murphy says. “The tsunami search and recovery requires marine robots, and that market has been smaller and less visible.”

Unfortunately, by the time Murphy’s team arrived in Japan, the robots were not useful for the search and recovery of human survivors.

“Tsunamis don’t leave many survivors that aren’t on top of buildings or easy to find.

You either drowned or you didn’t. So you don’t need ground robots to search for survivors. But you do need marine vehicles to help with underwater critical infrastructure inspection and searching for victims.”

Still, Murphy says that for both of her missions to Japan, Japanese officials focused on victim recovery and “human assessable” approaches to reactor control and victim recovery. As of 20 March, the majority of the 11,000 missing, and presumed dead, tsunami victims were assumed to be underwater, “requiring an unprecedented use by fire departments of manual drivers operating under high personal risk in freezing, highly turbid, debris-filled water where the [sic] can see only a meter or so and must conduct most of their work by touch,” Murphy writes.

the funds necessary for continued efforts in the Sendai region. Murphy expects to return to Japan in September or October 2011.

“These robots were not specifically designed for operation in highradiation environments.

We had some concerns with communications, we had some concerns about integrated cicruit board susceptibility to radiation, and all of those concerns have not been realized.”

-Tim Trainer, iRobot

This creates a perfect environment for a robot to go in and do a similar job more efficiently and with less risk than it would require sending in a person.

“In the end, it’s not about the technology; it’s about the people,” Murphy says in her blog. “So we are keeping the Japanese people in our thoughts and prayers — the terrible impact of the disasters, the sacrifices of the Fukushima plant workers, the awfulness of not being [able] to find or recover the bodies of loved ones — it’s just hard to comprehend.”

Murphy and her team at CRASAR will get another opportunity to help Japanese officials in their earthquake recovery efforts this fall. On 17 June, Murphy wrote on her blog that CRASAR and the International Rescue Systems Institute both received

Future bots

systems], but they don’t happen that often,” Larry Matthies, supervisor of the Computer Vision Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says. “In between disasters, the priority tends to drop and many don’t get the technology developed.

We need consistent priority on this.”

For instance, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has started work on micro air vehicles and ground vehicles with potential disaster use. Matthies highlighted some of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s work on first responder robotics in a presentation at AUVSI and NDIA’s Transportation Technology Transfer Initiative event in May. “Those could be used to go in and map the structure,” Matthies says. “So you can build a three-dimensional model of the building that will give you probably a better understanding of where damage is sustained and be able to evaluate the stability of the structure.”

Researchers used commercially available micro air vehicles as research platforms to construct the specialized robots. These MAVs work hand-in-hand with ground vehicles, helping them to later go into a structure and successfully map hazards and collect materials. For instance, if a MAV is equipped with infrared cameras to monitor temperature, then a ground vehicle can later receive that information and go into the damaged building to complete 3-D mapping. But the systems are not yet perfect.

The New York Times reports the crisis at Fukushima will not be solved for at least another six months. But researchers from around the globe are already hard at work developing future generations of robotics to face the next natural disaster. They are currently in the prototype and development phases and, therefore, won’t immediately ready for the ongoing relief efforts in Japan, but they will hopefully ensure that a catastrophe of this magnitude doesn’t happen again.

“For an air vehicle in a first responder situation, collision avoidance is important, because presumably you’re flying around collapsed structures, so it’s a cluttered space,” Matthies says. “For both air and ground vehicles it might be a difficult communication environment, so you might have to set up some sort of relay communications.”

“The thing about natural disasters is when they happen you really need [unmanned

Across the pond, engineers at the University of Warwick in England have reconfig-

Matthies says he hopes the air and ground systems will be available for wider commercial use in five years.

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Japan disaster — continued from Page 21

some of the sensors on the autonomous robot need fine-tuning.

“What you want to avoid is false positives on identification, because obviously to a robot that’s using sensors to try to identify humans, sometimes it will miss humans and sometimes it will think something is human when it’s not, “ Maynes says.

The University of Warwick’s robots received international attention in 2010 when rescue workers in New Zealand requested their technology to help with relief efforts. The BBC has run news segments on the team, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has visited the robotics laboratory. Maynes says the team could not meet the demand in New Zealand, nor were they able to send their prototypes to Japan, but that does not mean the world has seen the last of this new technology.

QinetiQ North America’s Talon robot is being used at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant relief effort. Photo courtesy QinetiQ Group.

“Over the course of the next year, the team will be inheriting the project,” Maynes says. “One of the goals is to make the robot more commercially available. We’re on a learning curve still.”

Sensing change

ured Xbox Kinect machines as parts for a pair of search and rescue robots of their own. One robot, built by engineers, is teleoperated with a multi-jointed arm and thermal camera.

“It’s got quite a complex system of tracks,” says Matthew Maynes, a member of the 2010-2011 Robot Rescue Team at the University of Warwick. “That makes the robot particularly mobile across all sorts of complex terrain.”

A second robot, built by computer scientists, has a more elementary track and movement system but is completely autonomous. Engineers outfitted this robot with the Xbox technology because the entertainment machine’s sensors were just as powerful as the webcam they had previously used. The autonomous system used a 273-foot beam to create a range finder within a frame, allowing rescue workers to 22

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accurately map out damaged, and potentially dangerous, environments.

“At a lot of the buildings that haven’t actually collapsed, you have sites where there are teams of rescue workers and buildings where people could still be alive, but rescuers can’t go into the building because it could collapse and kill the rescuers,” Maynes says. “We’re not concerned with the safety of the robots, so to speak, so you could instantly send the robot into the building and take a look around. Potentially, it can save a lot of time in rescue operations, because you don’t have to get every building safe for robots to enter.”

From a technology standpoint, the next step in making these Xbox robots more useful in disaster settings is extending the system’s battery life. Using their current batteries, the robots can only function for 20 minutes at a time. Also, Maynes says

To get robots like those at NASA and the University of Warwick ready for disaster situations like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, experts say the unmanned systems industry must make advances in the sensor technology for first responder systems. Murphy says most of the development of first responder robots has focused on mobility, with limited emphasis on sensing.

“The first wave has focused on perception at a distance, and the community is making great progress there,” Murphy says.

“The next wave is action at a distance.”

Once the sensing improves, the robotics community has to tackle the cost of getting these systems into disaster situations.

Murphy writes in her blog that it’s difficult for any country to plan for the cost of disaster.

“Robots generally run from $50,000 to $150,000 depending on sensors and op-

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Japan disaster — continued from Page 23 tions,” Murphy says. “That seems a lot, but a basic heavy rescue truck — not a pumper, just a truck with a lot of storage units — will cost $200,000. Robots are much more sophisticated and specialized.

It’s just a matter of budgeting for them.”

“As always it comes down to budgets and frequency of occurrence and the demand and march of technology,” Trainer says.

“We don’t have 9.0 earthquakes happen all that often, if ever, and that’s the challenge on the budgeting side. Do you build the capability and sustain the capability for infrequent situations?”

Beyond technological hurdles, Murphy says the robotics community needs to redefine what it is these systems do.

“Robots aren’t first responders,” Murphy says. “They don’t replace people or canines; rather they do things that people or canines cannot. They are tools that responders use to extend themselves into the disaster zone. I think this crisis will heighten awareness of rescue robots and how they can assist and amplify efforts.”

In the midst of this tragedy, it’s the human success stories that make the robotic success stories all the more phenomenal.

Trainer says when engineers and computer

scientists figured out how to apply their military robotics to a disaster recovery situation, it provided a sense of personal reward for all who worked on the project at iRobot.

“It made them feel good,” Trainer says. “It was why they came into this profession, and so folks are really hoping that we can do something to mitigate the situation and help the folks in Japan. It’s why we’re in business.”

Stephanie Levy is associate editor of Mission Critical.

For More Information: CRASAR workers use the SeaBotix SARbot in the waters of Minamisanriku-Choy. Photo courtesy Robin Murphy, CRASAR.

Robin Murphy’s blog: http://crasar.org/category/directors-blog

Q&A

Henrik Christensen

Henrik Christensen is the KUKA chair of robotics at Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Computing and the director of the university’s Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. Christensen’s work focuses on systems integration, human-robot interaction, mapping and robot vision.

Q:

How would you describe the current state of robotics technology as used by first responders?

A: The technology is really largely teleoperated, so it’s really basic technology. One of the things that we’re trying to push for is to make the technology more autonomous. Today it’s purely teleoperated, and because of this they have to spend a lot of time controlling it. … You can cognitively overload people who are already in a stressful situation. We want to get the system to help them have to think as little as possible.

Q:

How can we better design remotely controlled robots so the operators aren’t in harm’s way?

A: If we think about many of these first responders, they are really young people. As an example, if you take the average male in the U.S., the average 20-year-old male in the U.S. has spent more than 10,000 hours as a first-person gamer. They really know how to use a game pad. So if we designed our robots to take advantage of the fact that many of the people that are going to be using this technology have already spent 10,000 hours being [a] first-person gamer, they have a lot of training that we can use to our advantage. … The first time I did this, about five years ago, we did a system for this, and I went out and presented it to some soldiers, and I was explaining to them all of the controls. One of them said, “Why don’t you just give it to me.” And I gave it to him, and he was an instant expert. Me, in the mid-40s, I’m too old. On the other hand, I’m not the person that’s going to be the end user of this. So

it’s really thinking about how can we leverage these experiences that these young people have to make it ideally suited for them.

Q:

How are the robotic needs of police different from, say, firefighters or search and rescue teams? Can the same platforms serve them all?

A: I think it’s true that the basic platform can more or less be the same, but I think we need to adapt it so it’s different for each of them. Search and rescue teams have very well developed protocols for how they search through a building, and it’s the same with firefighters. Police, for their SWAT teams, they have well defined protocols. The difference is both for the military and firefighters. They train over and over and have standard protocols for standard situations. The police have the problem that there are very few situations that they see that are the same. They might have hostage situations, suspicious items in a shopping mall. … We actually did a six-month study with a SWAT team in Stockholm. It was very clear that they had entirely different needs for their initiatives, for their operating procedures than firefighters and search and rescue.

The firefighter wants to get a sense, what does this building look like? Are there people in there? Then we can be very targeted in how we design the system. For the police, we need something very different.

They are very interested in a hostage situation. If you have to go in and be a hostage negotiator, you have to be in a situation where you can see them and they can see you. There are lots of body language cues.

You have to think about, can you send in a man and a woman, because there are some people who will not talk to a woman simply because of religious reasons or other reasons. If you sent in a robot with a camera on top, you don’t have to worry about gender anymore, and you don’t give any [body language] cues, such as are you nervous. The people you are negotiating with are going to be, whoa, what am I up against here? You get an upper hand immediately.

Q:

Are there any common factors as to what makes for a good first responder/search and rescue robot (wheels versus tracks, tracks versus legs, etc.)?

A: I would say the tracked vehicles that we have today, if you think about the [iRobot] PackBots and the Foster-Miller Talon platform, are actually very good. You need to have a robot that can go up and down a staircase. There are very few places where you don’t need to go up and down staircases.

For collapsed buildings, you need smaller platforms that you can send in through rubble. PackBots and Talons are very flexible, but they’re really too big for moving through rubble. At the same time, you can say it would be nice to have at least three different sizes of robots: a small platform to [go] through rubble; medium, such as PackBots and Talons for reconnaissance; and then you would like to have a slightly larger platform that can sort of carry serious payload. If you take the example in Fukushima [Japan] where they had a problem bringing water to the spent fuel rods, if you had a robot — a PackBot and Mission Critical

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Q & A — continued from Page 25 a Talon would not have enough payload to really go there, but if you had a more powerful robot, you could almost just drive the robot over there with a hose and turn on the water. I don’t think there is one size fits all. It’s very clear that we need different kinds of robots. But it’s very clear that we can build a library of sizes.

Q:

Can you tell us a little bit about your MAST-related work and where you expect that to lead?

A: The MAST-related work is on micro autonomous systems. They are working at building really small platforms. For example you can think about them as being the size of 4-by-4-by-4 inches, but building a really large number of these platforms, and the target is, how do we go the last 300 meters or the last 300 feet. When first responders have to come up to a situation, the largest number of casualties is the last 300 feet. You would like to have robots that can go through relatively small entrances, go in and figure out what is the scenario on the other side of this door. When you have a group of first responders to come out, you open a door [and] you have no idea what’s on the other side of that door.

We want to be able to send in a small set of really inexpensive robots that can generate a situational awareness of what’s going on on the other side. You’d have between five and 50 robots that you can send in.

Ideally, you’d like to have them in your

pocket. You could throw one in through a window, and you could image having a cellphone platform or something like that so very quickly you can have an idea of what is going on. …

The overall scenario is, imagine that you’d fly in with a small unmanned aircraft, a quadrotor or something like that. Then you deploy these mobile robots. They could have spectrometers to understand the gas composition, is it toxic, they could have radar to scan through walls, to detect the layout.

Q:

How important is cooperation between universities on this type of research?

A: I think it’s very important. In MAST we have four different arenas: platforms, or walking, wheels, spherical small rolling balls; electronic, what’s the right computing platform; then the autonomy people creating algorithms for mapping; then an integration team asking, what are the right scenarios for this, how do we do an evaluation to make sure it’s relevant for end users.

There are very few universities in the U.S. where you find all this expertise in one place. The Army has 10 or 12 to work with us on this, getting locomotion from UC Berkeley, electronics from Michigan, which is very good with them, getting autonomy from Georgia Tech; they spread it out widely. I think it’s very important, because it’s a lot of risk if you only did this

in one place that you would not necessarily get the best technology. I actually think it’s very smart.

Q:

What are the main technological hurdles you see for robotics for first responders right now?

A: I think we sort of have them all over the spectrum. Getting good enough mobility to really traverse whatever terrain you’re going to get into is still a really big challenge. To throw it out into the stuff we see, like in Japan, is really, really tough. You would like to have a small robot, but at the same time you want to go up and down a staircase. We really need legged [systems] to be able to handle these unlevel terrains.

We also don’t need a $100,000 robot; we need thousand-dollar robots, having that agile mobility at low cost. Then the other is, how do we come up with a sensor platform that can get integrated into this.

There, one of my own bets is that I think we can learn a lot from the telephone platforms. If you look at most smartphones, they have a built-in camera, built-in communications system, built-in GPS and accelerometer. … If you throw away the fancy display you can really get to a competitive computing platform.

We need to develop better sensors; they are developing really small radars. It’s a big challenge, but there is the question of how can we get the cost down to something so it can be component from the shelf. Traditionally it’s been so that the military would buy special-purpose components, so it’s really expensive. Rather than using an interface custom-built for first responders, you use a gamepad and it’s really cheap.

That’s what we need to do for sensors and platforms as well. Mobility, sensor platforms, all of them need to get to the next level.

Q:

When do you think those hurdles will be overcome enough to make the systems more useful, and more importantly, widely adopted?

Henrik Christensen. All photos by Gary Meck, courtesy Georgia Tech.

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Summer 2011

A: I think we’re going to see a lot of progress over the next two or three years in

terms of developing prototype platforms that we can demonstrate, and then I think for all of these platforms from then it’s going to take at least five years to commercialize them. Even if I went to a lab tomorrow and demonstrated the ideal first responder platform, and I found a defense contractor that would be willing to commercialize it, it’s five years down the road.

Q:

How would you assess the current state of military ground robotics?

A: They’re still almost entirely teleoperated.

I think the big difference that we’re seeing — and one of the advantages we’re seeing in the U.S. — is because we’ve done such extensive testing in Iraq and other places, we’ve developed this into a very mature technology, whereas in Japan they’ve been developing some very impressive technology, but they’ve never had the opportunity to test it. The reason we’re seeing so much success from the U.S. robotics is they’ve been able to deploy close to 10,000 robots around the world and test them over and over again. I think that’s also the difference between [police] EOD robots. We might have 400 of them out there, but they’re not getting used every day, they’re not getting beaten up every day.

One of the challenges with military robots is sometimes there’s too little feedback coming back from the field to the companies and the universities. That’s partly from security concerns, and it’s understandable, but if we could get more information back … I think we could develop even better robots. It’s very difficult to get access all the way out to the front guy.

Q:

What ongoing research, both at Georgia Tech and outside it, has you most interested these days?

A: The thing that’s most interesting is to get semi-autonomy for these systems. It’s getting the systems to a level where they can do real simple things, like go through a doorway, pass through a doorway, go up to a target. By giving these really small, welldefined sub-missions to a system, it’s possible for the operator to get a five-second

break, and by getting a five-second break, he can look up and look around and get a sense of what’s going on around him. It reduces the stress that an operator has, and he’s going to be much more comfortable.

This is a gradual move in the direction of having more autonomy.

None of these are going to have full autonomy. We know we are close. If we want to go down that slope, build in these relatively simple things and through this they’re going to feel much more comfortable in using this autonomy. Overall, that will move us in the direction of getting to the kind of autonomy we’re seeing on aerial vehicles.

Q:

Is there any pushback from professional users against these systems?

What can be done to allay any concerns the police/firefighters might have?

A: I don’t think there is a technology pushback; they want these. If you can take them away from the immediate danger, they would want to have these technologies tomorrow. The main pushback is in terms of price or priorities. If a fire chief says, I can either buy a new fancy robot or put new tires on these trucks, that’s an easy decision, he’s going to put new tires on these trucks. We need to bring it down so it’s as much utility as the price of putting new tires on the trucks. Most new technology is still expensive and they are not widely used enough. They [first responders] want it, there’s no doubt, but they’re worried about the price.

Q:

As you develop technologies for first responder robots, such as teaming behaviors, how much of that could transition to home robotics as well?

A: There’s no doubt that eventually it’s going to get deployed. In some sense, iRobot is the poster child: You develop navigation systems, getting advanced technology, and then once you know what the technology is, you can transition it into consumer products and manufacture it in very large volumes. If you look at the MAST technologies, those kinds of mapping technologies can go into a vacuum cleaner, and by

Henrik Christensen

doing this we can build vacuum cleaners that can be much more efficient in cleaning rooms.

If you go in for a search and rescue robot to identify people, that technology is going to be crucial to monitor people in their homes … as part of health care and still maintain security and privacy. You don’t want to send all this information away without having the right kind of security.

As an example, we have a project at Georgia Tech, what we call the intelligent frame.

My parents live in Denmark; I can’t pop by every day and say hi, how are you doing. We have a picture frame where there is sort of an icon. … The size of the icon is proportional to the amount of activity going on in the other person’s home. If I see the icon is really small, I will call and say, “ Are you OK?” If it’s a big icon, I will call and say, “Was that a really good party last night?”

Q:

What’s the most fun part of what you do?

A: I think the most fun part is that we’re developing tech that has a huge impact.

I’ve been involved in the effort that was the first time that we developed autonomous vacuum cleaners for the home. I’ve been working for the police, I’ve been working for the military; we’re developing technology that changes people’s lives.

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27

TIMELINE

Rescue robots through the years

A mere 30 years ago, rescue robots were in their infancy, often used or created as an afterthought of a tragic event. But over the years, the tides turned. With a large early push from the academic community, robotics companies and the military now regularly see their unmanned systems put in the line of danger.

2001

Sept. 11, 2001 Three experimental robots were used at the World Trade Center disaster site in

1983

New York City through work with search and rescue robot pioneer Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot Assisted

Three Mile Island

Search and Rescue, then located at the University of South Florida. The robots carried thermal cameras to detect body heat

dangerous nuclear

and color detection cameras that searched

fallout after the Three

for colors that varied from the gray dust

Mile Island meltdown

that encapsulated lower Manhattan after

in 1979, researchers

the attack.

0

started formulating

0

ideas for rescue robots that would be used to

0

clean up in the nuclear contamination zone.

2

A Carnegie Mellon University team developed three robots, called Workhorses, to clean up the basement

5

of a damaged reactor at the worst nuclear

9

disaster in U.S. history. brought back core

9

1

2002

The robots, which

samples and surveyed the area, entered the disaster zone in 1983 and 1984.

1998

Chernobyl disaster Although the robot was used long after the 1986 disaster, once again, Carnegie Mellon went into a nuclear disaster with a robot, this one named Pioneer. This robot was equipped with sensors to measure radiation, temperature and humidity; sample concrete structures; and make a 3-D map of the disaster environment, part of a multimillion dollar effort to reinforce the power plant so it wouldn’t leak another large amount of fallout because of structural collapse.

Quecreek Mine disaster Inaccurate underground maps led nine miners astray, trapping them in an adjoining mine. Although miners in the Pennsylvania disaster were rescued by people, the emergency led to the development of robotics pioneer William “Red” Whittaker’s Groundhog robot, which could create accurate mine maps to avoid similar future disasters.

2

Murphy and her graduate students used

In the extremely

2007

Crandall Canyon mine collapse Initially, only mine workers were trapped in the Crandall Canyon, Utah, disaster. But then 10 days after the initial collapse, rescue workers also became trapped and died because of a second seismic incident in the cave,

0 1 0

forcing authorities to suspend human rescue efforts. In the

2

coming days, rescue workers uses robotic cameras placed

0 2 0 2

2

5 202

5 1 0 2 2011

Great East Japan earthquake

through bore holes to investigate the mine despite still present

One of the largest earthquakes on

seismic activity.

record struck the Tohoku region of Japan earlier this year, causing a tsunami, a nuclear disaster at

5

the nearby Fukushima Dai-ichi

0

power plant and a seemingly endless series of aftershocks.

Though the magnitude of disaster

2005

0

2

030

was immense — about 15,000 deaths and nearly 10,000 people

Hurricane Katrina

missing according to Japanese

Both ground and aerial

seen. UAS from quadrotors to the

robots were used in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. While

police — the robotic response was also one of the largest ever

2006

Global Hawk surveyed the area from above, iRobot and QinetiQ North America lent their ground

searched overhead for

Sago Mine disaster

survivors, University of

The Federal Mine Safety

inspection and locating bodies of

and Health Administration

victims of the tsunami.

unmanned aircraft

South Florida robots looked on the ground for buildings with structure damage.

However, aerial use was not extensive due to flight restrictions and responders resorted to duct-taping a small Evolution UAV to a manned helicopter so they could use its sensors. Robots continued their work after the disaster, helping with aerial structure inspection through a National Science Foundation program.

robots to the efforts and unmanned underwater vehicles were used for

lowered a 1,300-pound robot into the Sago mine in West Virginia, a disaster that killed 13 people and trapped one survivor. The robot had to be pulled out before it could be used after getting stuck half a mile into the mine.

2010

Haiti earthquake The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti in early 2010 was surveyed only from the air from UAS like Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk. Murphy wrote of the situation, “In these large geographically distributed disasters, aerial assets (manned or unmanned) are helpful in establishing what is damaged, where people appear to be in the most danger or need and whether roads are passable. Ground robots are helpful for large buildings, but, in general, dogs are the biggest help in finding victims in residential areas.”

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29

5

203

UNMANNED SYSTEMS VS.

WILDFIRES

BY LINDSAY VOSS

The Wildfire 2011 demonstration in South Africa.

Photo by Lindsay Voss.

O

minous clouds of smoke rolled through the sky. The temperature dropped 5 to 10 degrees, a wind, non-existent before, began to stir, as the unmistakable crackle of dry grass and trees grew louder. The controlled flames moved through the grass and brush of the Pilanesberg Game Reserve in the Bojanala Region of the North West Province in South Africa. Warm and dry with an ample fuel supply, the reserve was primed for a wildfire.

Luckily, this fire was destined to be shortlived. Almost as quickly as the flames were ignited, a team of helicopters swooped down and doused the burn before it spread beyond the pre-planned fire lines. More than 1,000 spectators cheered in unison as the helicopters repeatedly made their water drops until the once roaring fire was little more than a smoldering hillside.

With the fire extinguished, the crowd of onlookers slowly made its way back to a fleet of safari buses while the helicopters flew back to their airbase stationed about five miles away. Everyone was safe. Several herds of impala continued to graze unfazed by the fire that threatened them 30

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a short time ago. The aerial fire demonstration, a part of the Wildfire 2011 conference held in Sun City, South Africa, this May, had come to a successful end. Unfortunately, the controlled flames and fully staffed response to the Pilanesberg fire demonstration was hardly representative of most wildland fires in South Africa or any place else in the world.

Living with wildfire A few weeks earlier in West Texas, another wildfire scenario played out. This time there was no crowd of excited onlookers, but rather fleeing homeowners adhering to mandatory evacuations. Herds of livestock were destroyed; homes and other structures burned to the ground and lives were lost. These burns represented the reality of wildfire.

Initially, volunteer firefighters, understaffed and underfunded, were called upon to protect thousands of acres of farmland and hundreds of towns. After several weeks of uncontrollable fire, heavy air tankers and modified C-130s were called in to suppress the flames. More than 1,400 firefighters from almost all 50 states were

also on hand working the burns. By late April, wildfires stretched from Texas’ western borders across the state to Houston.

Fortunately, this spring’s wildfires in Texas occurred during a time when U.S. firefighting resources were abundant, and many potential disastrous scenarios were avoided. However, as harsh winters, drought, high winds and scalding temperatures plague the southern United States and other regions of the world, the threat of fire will continue to increase and resource shortages will likely be a reality.

With lives at risk and billions of dollars in property at stake, policy makers, researchers and industry are looking for the best tools and technologies to combat the wildfire threat.

Could unmanned aircraft systems be the secret weapon to combat the flames? In an effort to answer that question researchers around the world are exploring the possibility of utilizing UAS to aid firefighters during events such as the Texas fires this spring and similar fire events around the world. They are also addressing the key challenges that will have to be overcome to ensure UAS are successfully deployed.

Fighting fire with UAS in the U.S. UAS are continuing to pique the interest of the firefighting and research communities. While the systems are not replacements for boots on the ground, they are added tools capable of augmenting resources that are stretched thin.

UAS have been used for several years in limited situations to monitor wildland fires in the United States and abroad.

The Ikhana, a modified Predator-B aircraft owned by the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, is one of the most well known wildfire monitoring UAS. In 2007, the Ikhana was used to deliver real-time pictures and video feed of wildfires in Southern California to firefighters and incident commanders. Information provided by the Ikhana’s sensor systems can be used to predict fire behavior, identify fire

location and estimate fire size. Since 2007, the system has been used for fire monitoring, sensor testing and scientific research.

While the Ikhana’s imagery is useful for wildfire monitoring, smaller UAS could be the most beneficial to firefighters. To date, much of the UAS firefighting research has been conducted using UAS weighing less than 100 pounds. There are several reasons for this, including system cost, training and logistics requirements. Smaller systems will be easier for fire departments to manage if they are interested in procuring their own UAS assets.

Domestically, small UAS have been tested for use by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service using a Raven A system. Researchers from the Poker Flat Research Range used a 40-pound ScanEagle UAS in 2009 to map the Crazy Mountain

Complex fires in Alaska. Small UAS have also been flown for fire research during the AUVSI-sponsored Firefighting Table Top Exercise 2010, conducted in conjunction with the Naval Post Graduate School Center for Asymmetric Warfare and during the Prescribed Fire Combustion-Atmospheric Dynamics Research Experiments, or Rx CADRE, conducted in February 2011 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

The United States isn’t the only country researching the possibility of incorporating UAS into fire prevention, management and operations. Researchers in Europe, Australia and Asia are also exploring the effectiveness of these emerging technologies in hopes that one day they will be fielded to aid firefighters in real-world operations.

A helicopter swings into action at the Wildfire 2011 demonstration in South Africa. Photo by Lindsay Voss.

Firefighting — continued from Page 31

UAS and firefighting in Hungary Approximately 6,000 miles from the Texas fires in the district of Szendr, Hungary, Dr. Ágoston Restás, a former fire chief with the Szendr Fire Department, is also researching the use of small unmanned aircraft systems for wildland fire monitoring and other public safety applications.

Restás started exploring the possibility of incorporating UAS into fire operations when he was still fire chief and responsible for protecting the Aggtelek National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, from the threat of fire. In 2006, the Szendrő Fire Department was one of the first departments in the world to take ownership of an unmanned aircraft.

Today, Restás has expanded his research beyond forest fires to include other areas of disaster management such as flood moni-

toring, but fire still remains a key area of focus for his UAS work. According to Restás, UAS can be very effective for firefighting from the operations perspective due to their ability to be quickly deployed.

“The essence of incorporating UAS at the operational level is the ability to quickly gain access to information,” Restás explains. “If we lose this, we lose the advantage of using the UAS. That is why at [the] operational level complex technology and extra staff aren’t needed, just the capability to provide quick aerial reconnaissance and information.”

While Restás has had some success in his research efforts, flying UAS in Hungary and other regions of Europe has not been easy. There has also been some hesitance from the fire community in Europe to embrace the technology. Additionally, there is a disconnect between UAS developers and the firefighting community.

The Sky-Eye prototype performs a low level scanning operation over the test area. The image shows the organization of both the thermal and visual cameras, computation box and communication antennas. Photo courtesy Enric Pastor.

“In Europe, the UAS market has not quite taken hold,” Restás says. “UAS technology is not preferred yet for many applications.

It’s very easy to hide in the shadow of the air traffic management issue. There is also a tendency to focus on research and development rather than products.”

Restás also says that firefighters tend to be wary of a technology that they feel could replace them, especially pilots. But ultimately, the decision to procure and field is based on economics.

“There has to be an emphasis on the economic effectiveness of UAS operations,” he says. “I am sure that UAS activity would increase drastically if the decision to operate them was based not on tradition but rather the technology’s economically based effectiveness.”

According to Restás, another important component to fielding UAS for firefighting and other public safety applications is closing the circle between product development and the firefighter or public safety specialist.

“The biggest challenge is finding the most effective channel between the UAS developers and the firefighting community,” Restás says. “UAS should be designed to be an effective tool for the firefighter, and often times this is not the case. If fire brigades were able to carry a cheap, simple and quickly deployable UAS capable of being onsite during a fire in five minutes or less, and the incident commander could have real-time information within minutes of deployment, then the system would be effective for the firefighter.”

Despite the challenges, the road ahead for Restás and his UAS efforts appears to be strong. This summer he plans to work with a team from Croatia conducting research flights using a Fenix UAS in Hungary and along the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia. He will also be working with the Spanish and Swiss teams from Working on Fire Europe. They are planning to fly near Berlin, above an area polluted with unexploded ordnance during a prescribed burn. During this exercise, Restás and his

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Firefighting researcher Enric Pastor is investigating using a small, rotary wing UAS for hot spot detection. Photo courtesy Enric Pastor.

team plan to ignite the burn using fire pastilles dropped from an unmanned aircraft and also monitor the fire once it is started.

These efforts will be directed at demonstrating UAS effectiveness in fire scenarios.

UAS and firefighting in Spain Approximately 1,000 miles west of Hungary, Enric Pastor, associate professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Castelldefels, Spain, is also exploring how unmanned aircraft could be used to assist firefighters. Pastor and his team of researchers are investigating the use of a small, rotary wing UAS as a “hot spot” detector. The team’s Sky-Eye prototype UAS has not been flown operationally yet, but it has conducted flight-confined tests, and the team hopes to fly operationally during Spain’s controlled burn season in spring 2012.

“Hot spot detection is quite relevant during final containment and mop-up operations,” Pastor says. “Small UAS can carry on with this task quite efficiently, cooperating with ground crews and releasing manned helicopters from this time consuming task. Then those assets can be em-

ployed in other active fronts, thus improving efficiency and/or reducing the cost of the operation.”

“Further scenarios have been identified, some of them quite specific to [the] U.S., like keeping a continuous watch on wildfires in unreachable areas, that given to U.S. policy are not being actively pursued,” Pastor continues. “These types of operations will relieve manned aircraft that could be employed to other tasks much more suited to them.”

While Pastor’s team is working to demonstrate the benefit of UAS for hot spot monitoring, he admits that incorporating unmanned aircraft in real-world fire scenarios involves more than proving that the technologies are viable for firefighting applications. There are other factors at play, including the interaction between the UAS and the firefighter.

“How firefighters task the UAS to evaluate the fire parameters they need to know, such as actual extend, perimeter, hot spots, how fast the fire is moving, weather conditions, etc. and how UAS will collect all of this information and provide it to the

firefighter in a coherent and comprehensible way, is a major challenge,” Pastor says.

“That means that UAS can no longer work driven by a flight plan or manually. Instead we need them to be tasked with high-level commands that conform to the CONOPS [concept of operations] employed by firefighters. More importantly, how will UAS download this amount of information and present it to firefighters given the limitations of the UAS-ground segment communication link? Obviously UAS will have to digest the information on board before downlinking it in a format that is much more user friendly.”

Pastor and Restás agree that in order for the firefighting community to embrace UAS, there has to be a perceived value to operating the technology and collaboration between the fire community and industry. The most obvious benefit, increased safety, may not be enough to get UAS in the hand of firefighters.

“First of all, the firefighter community needs to be truly convinced that these platforms will provide a value. Even though there is … activity in the U.S., I’m not sure that all of the firefighting comMission Critical

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Summer 2011

33

Firefighting — continued from Page 33 munity understands the potentialities and limitations,” Pastor says. “From the UAS community perspective, I believe that lots of research is needed and that UAS vendors need to understand that they cannot try to sell their vehicles as-is for these types of operation. Thus, open-minded cooperation is needed between end users, researchers and companies to produce the right UAS for the task,” he added.

Despite the challenges, Pastor is hopeful that his team’s upcoming Sky-Eye demonstrations will help prove the value and effectiveness of UAS for hot spot monitoring and fire surveillance. He has received interest in the U.S. from the U.S. Forest

Service and Cal Fire — organizations that are both proponents of UAS technologies.

Back in the USA While research and demonstrations continue, so do the wildfires. According to the National Climatic Data Center, in May 2011 there were 6,625 fires that burned approximately 1.1 million acres in the U.S., with most of the fires occurring in the southern plains states. This was the most U.S. acreage burned during the month of May on record.

Getting UAS into the hands of firefighters will not be an easy task, but as wildfires continue to rage out of control, it could be imperative to saving lives and property. Pastor and his team are committed to

helping get the best technologies available to the end user through their research.

“Wildfire is a type of crisis that, compared to earthquakes and others, is with us every year all over the world,” he says. “Given that we are no longer actively managing forests, the risk of fire increases. Any technology that may help fighting those fires safely and economically is a way to preserve the resources on our planet. Firefighters risk their lives every year to secure our properties. … They are the main motivation for our research group. We believe that they deserve the best tools to do their job more securely and efficiently.”

Lindsay Voss is senior research analyst at AUVSI.

Restás with several members of the Szendro Fire Department, certified in UAS operations, standing alongside the city’s mayor and a member of the Hungarian parliament on 14 Aug. 2006 during a ceremony introducing the department’s three new unmanned aircraft to the media and the community. Photo courtesy Ágoston Restás.

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Summer 2011

1

FUTURE JOBS

A millennial market

F

rom student competitions to university robotics teams, the threshold for entering the robotics industry keeps getting younger and younger. As such, opportunities for students to shape the robotics industry, and their chances of employment, are growing and diversifying.

“Students love artificial intelligence and the societal application,” Center for Robotic Assisted Search and Rescue Director Robin Murphy says. “I have standing offers from companies that they will hire any student I recommend, so I see a rosy future. And the experience making robots work for demanding real-world applications and learning to work with end users is extremely valuable experience.”

One place where students can get training to operate first responder robots is at the FBI’s Hazardous Devices School in Huntsville, Ala. Opened in 2001, the school provides certification training for all bomb technicians in the United States.

When it opened, the facility worked with 2,300 public safety bomb technicians nationwide.

“HDS also provides specialty courses for bomb squad personnel, including a robot course,” the FBI said in a 2001 press release.

To keep up these opportunities for young people, the robotics industry needs funding resources that can cover the costs of an employee’s salary and the robot itself. Often, the person costs as much as the robot.

“Devices that cost more than $30,000 generally have to be purchased with some sort of federal funds or a city or county can’t afford it,” Murphy says.

The greater industry Many of the technological problems th at roboticists will be hired to solve in the first responder robotics industry have greater impact on other fields of study and development. Tim Trainer, vice president of operations at iRobot, says he doesn’t see a unique difference in job opportunities for search and rescue robots when the unmanned systems industry as a whole is working towards many of the same goals.

“I’m not sure I would separate first responder robotics from other robotic technologies we’re working “I have standing offers on here,” Trainer says.

“There is autonomy, from companies that there is manipulation, they will hire any there is maneuverability, there’s research and student I recommend, development; all of those same technologies so I see a rosy future.” are applicable over our government industrial - Robin Murphy product line.”

Trainer says the development of first responder robots, and the jobs that focus on them, will depend on a symbiotic relationship between market and government needs.

“It is a two-fold approach as to whether they’re market driven or government driven,” Trainer says. “The other side of that is you can modify existing technology, which is what I would argue we’ve done with the PackBot and Warrior [See Page 9 for more information], to be applicable in disaster situations.”

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37

POP CULTURE CORNER

Cops and Robots

S

ecurity and law enforcement robots of the future typically serve as plot points to make the view or reader question the power men give to machines.

The history of film and literature helps us take a look at the balance of power through the actions and capabilities of future robots — some weaponized, some able to evolve on their own — that point to important ethics questions posed to current roboticists. That, and sometimes pleather-clad white go-go boots go a long way in the art of distraction.

‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’

The original movie is forever a part of U.S. culture, and is preserved in the National Film Registry. The movie was remade in 2008 starring Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, but we’d rather not talk about that.

Part man, part machine, all cop Tasked with serving the public, protecting the innocent and upholding the law, RoboCop, a cyborg creation by Detroit’s contracted-out police company Omni Consumer Products, is the Michigan city’s answer for clamping down on a crime-ridden future version the Motor City.

The original Robocop, this 1951 film featured Gort, one of the most famous early depictions of a robot on the big screen.

While not like many of the real police robots in use today, Gort, an alien creation, flashes a beam from a glass strip across his armored face to vaporize weapons and anything involved in an act of violence in an effort to keep the peace, essentially as an interstellar martial lawman.

Based on the short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, Gort largely remains in one spot, the President’s Park next to the White House, while his more human-like creator Klaatu roams around Washington, D.C. Concerned about the United States’ use of atomic power, Klaatu puts all electric power in a holding pattern, stopping cars, clocks and pretty much everything else in its tracks.

After a series of violent events, Gort takes out two police and has to revive Klaatu after a near-death shooting. Before leaving the scene with their spaceship, Klaatu warns that they have made an entire race of anti-aggression robots like Gort, and should Earth ever bring its violence into space, the robots will destroy the planet.

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Technically part zombie and part robot, since the RoboCop program requires a recently killed body for cyborg conversion, this half-man, half-machine concept was a second attempt to create the perfect autonomous cop after a 100 percent robotic creation killed a businessman during a demonstration.

RoboCop came tricked out with weapons, mostly his 9 mm handgun stored in a mechanical holster on his right leg, but also machine guns, rocket launchers, a Cobra Assault Cannon and grenades, all actual possibilities of weaponized ground vehicles on the front lines, albeit on a less human platform.

‘I, Robot’ Loosely based on Isaac Asimov’s arguably most celebrated series of short stories, the 2004 film “I, Robot” is set in a world where robots are used subserviently alongside humans and must adhere to the Three

Laws of Robotics, originally outlined by Asimov.

The protagonist, Del Spooner, a Chicago cop played by Will Smith, is actually a cyborg himself, since getting a robotic arm and lung replacement after a car accident, though he generally detests the advancing status of robots in society.

Although the robots are supposed to not harm humans, Spooner is suspicious that a robot that plays against the rules, Sonny, has killed the creator of his arm, who is dead in an apparent suicide.

Model NS-5s begin destroying all future versions of robots and imprisoning and enforcing a curfew on human society. An evolution in company U.S. Robotic’s supercomputer allows the robots to neglect Asimov’s laws, which they justify by saying, “you charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your earth and pursue ever more imaginative means of your self-destruction.” The computer figures that more humans will die if these actions go forward instead of suppressing people in the robotic rebellion. Spooner eventually destroys the supercomputer when he releases nanobots into its core.

Attack of the Fembots With much campier take on how armed robots will look in the future, the Austin Powers trilogy brought the world of robotics the “Fembot.” Female robots decked out in frilly clothing and with bouffants, the Fembots lure an always-ready Austin but have a secret weapon — pistols that shoot from, well, as Austin would say, their jumblies.

Tasked with killing the International Man of Mystery, the Fembots are foiled in the first movie when Powers’ allure causes them to short circuit.

Shooed by SWATs? Robots face tech,

TECHNOLOGY GAP

cultural hurdles on the police force “I’d just as soon as walk out of

my barracks without my rifle as walk out without this stuff.”

That’s the sentiment soldiers express to Gen. James Cartwright, the United States’ second highest ranking military officer, he says. And “that stuff ” is robots. The cultural acceptance of ground robotics for anti-improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq has been, some could argue, a conquered issue. With 10,000 ground robots deployed into battle, seeking out these ground weapons — which are the number one way soldiers are killed in battle in the current wars — ­ without robots is, to many, unthinkable.

Not so for SWAT teams, says Capt. Robert Allen, special operations officer for the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office in South Florida, who says even he was slow to realize the benefits of using robots in stand off situations.

“Nothing rivals the stress you experience when you give the command to have people go in the door for you,” says Allen. “It’s that 30 seconds where you decide, ‘Am I going to send my people in, or am I going to send my robot in?’”

In the past 27 months, 127 police officers were killed in deliberate assaults in the United States, Allen said at a March ground robotics event in Orlando, Fla., and 2011 is set to eclipse 80 deaths in one year. But for many, learning to send in the robots instead of rushing in to cut down on a suspect’s plotting time is still the knee-jerk reaction of many SWAT personnel, he says.

“We’re learning to slow down, bring up the robots,” he says.

“It’s a slow change,” says Allen. “The average SWAT cops are 20 to 35 years old,” and they want to go in and solve things in

30 seconds, he said. Though that’s the instinct, “all it takes is one officer to go down and have that tool unused sitting beside you” for the media and lawyers to say, “Why didn’t you put the robot in first?”

Lack of cultural acceptance does have its benefits, though. Allen says that suspects have little idea how to react when a robot comes through their doorway instead of a person. Some threaten the robots with baseball bats; others let the robot pin them back into a corner out of fear. Robots intimidate suspects, Allen says.

If robots were quieter and rubberized, so they wouldn’t make a lot of noise knocking over tables and chairs, then they could be more valuable, he says.

Getting the robot to that door, though, is often challenging. One main issue Allen sees with the technology at its current state is the noise.

“They can wake a sleeping drunk, literally,” he says, and sometimes the force has opted against using a robot if they suspect the perpetrator is asleep. If robots were quieter and rubberized, so they wouldn’t make a lot of noise knocking over tables and chairs, then they could be more valuable, he says.

In the opposite vein, Allen says add-ons that would scare or disturb a suspect would also be really helpful.

“I would love to see some more light noise diversions, strobe lights,” he says. “Bad guys hate light and they hate noise.” If the SWAT team can go in and intimidate the suspect, flood the room with light and make him feel like he needs to get out, that

would be a “great tool to put on the front of our robots.”

“Some of our successes that some of the SWAT team does not consider successes is when the robot doesn’t find a person,” explains Allen. Once, the team had an armed suspect barricaded in a house that was wanted for months, but when they sent a robot into the house, it couldn’t find him.

He was “dancing with the robot,” says Allen, always making sure he was out of the camera’s line of sight.

“When our SWAT leaders came out and said [the robot couldn’t find the suspect], to me, that’s all right,” he says. “It did its job. It got the guy up and moving and gave us the advantage.”

When a robot does find a suspect, though, Allen says he would like to see a tracking feature on a robot so it could lock in on a perpetrator so the team doesn’t have to continuously re-find him.

Other platform problems Allen has experienced have included top heaviness, clothes and other garbage caught in a robot’s tracks, issues with ascending front porch stairs and what to do once the robot actually gets there.

“One of the negatives is we still typically have to breach the entry point for the robot to take entry,” he says, and that is the fatal point. “I haven’t seen the robot that will really go up. We haven’t found the robot that can simply pry your door open or pick a lock.”

Other issues the team has had with smaller toss-able robots are that they can be labor intensive with poor battery lives.

Add to all these issues the oppressive heat and humidity of South Florida, and sometimes robots will fail for Allen just due to long exposure to the climate.

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UNCANNY VALLEY

Permission to take off The Draganflyer, a small UAS quadrotor made

by Canadian company Draganfly, is the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office unmanned air system of choice. Photo courtesy Draganfly.

Uncanny Valley takes a look at the chasm between what a technology is capable of and what regulations and cultural limitations hold it back. While unmanned ground robots enjoy a mostly positive review from first responders and government organizations, UAS are still struggling to get up in the air.

T

his spring, eastern Arizona and New Mexico battled the blaze of a lifetime, fighting a wildfire that has stretched to about half the size of the state of Rhode Island. While fire services were loading up on boots on the ground, the Department of Homeland Security was busy putting an eye in the sky.

Three weeks after the Wallow Fire started to spread, the Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine answered the need for aerial reconnaissance with its Predator B unmanned system, providing video for the U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service.

“This is a huge step forward for the federal firefighting community, including the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service,” said Lance Brady, a BLM incident commander. “I can not tell you how appreciative and excited we are for your cooperation, especially if a home is saved tonight because of this technology and collaboration.”

That technology, though, can be notoriously difficult to employ, at least in the 40

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United States, and an extensive certificate of authorization process at the Federal Aviation Administration hampers the immediate use of UAS both small and large in many first responder scenarios. Although Predator has seen widespread use through the DHS, namely in protecting both north and south borders of the United States through nearly constant monitoring, use of small UAS to get surveillance footage of illegal activity or emergency situations is limited.

This year, Mesa County Sheriff ’s Office in Colorado became only the first to be able to fly anywhere in the county — a 3,300 square mile area — using its Draganflyer X6 micro air vehicle. However, the process of winning the department’s certificate to fly took nearly six months, and the county built upon its experience of a prior COA it won that allowed for daytime operations near the county landfill. The office has now filed a COA application for a small unmanned fixed wing aircraft. “We’re real excited to be moving forward with that,” says Benjamin Miller, the office’s UAS operations coordinator.

The path to obtaining and flying a small

UAS isn’t always as clear. In 2009, the Collin County Sheriff ’s Office, covering the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, withdrew a grant request for its own small fleet of systems after learning how difficult it would be to fly the UAS with the FAA’s restrictions.

However, progress is being made elsewhere in Texas. The Arlington Police Department received a Certificate of Authorization from the FAA to fly an 11-pound small UAS, built by Utah-based Leptron, for one year. Test flights will take place in a secure area near the Lake Arlington dam.

The UAS must be flown within the line of sight and may only reach altitudes of 400 feet.

“Though the Arlington Police Department does not yet have permission to fly outside its training area, law enforcement hopes to use this new technology in the future to take high quality photographs and video at crimes scenes and critical incidents,” the police department said in a 28 June media summary.

At a 28 June city council meeting, council members explained how testing of the SUAS will take place in three phases. First, the vehicle will be used for training and evaluation, and will also conduct mission exercises. Next, after the current COA has expired, the Arlington Police Department will get the SUAS mission-ready with the FAA’s approval. Finally, by 27 Jan. 2012, the Arlington Police Department hopes to have the SUAS performing fully integrated missions, where officers can fly it at will within one hour of notifying Air Traffic Control.

Engineered disaster: The importance of Disaster City

TESTING, TESTING

for training, testing and evaluation

The Japanese Science and Technology Agency first responder workshop and exercise at Disaster City evaluated the use of robots for underground tunnel and mine rescue. All photos by Lindsay Voss.

and the United States testing a variety of search and rescue robots. The researchers conducted a series of exercises with their systems, including vertical entry drops from the top of a rubble pile. Some of the same robots performing at Disaster City were called to duty a few days later following Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

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his year images of rubble piles and devastation in towns and cities around the world have been commonplace on the evening news. Haunting images of tidal wave destruction in Japan and tornado havoc in Missouri and Alabama are constant reminders of nature’s unbridled power.

In College Station, Texas, destruction and devastation are a way of life at the Texas Engineering Extension Service’s Disaster City. The 52-acre facility combines almost every disaster imaginable, including building collapses, train derailments and debris piles reminiscent of those produced by an EF5 tornado. The emergency experts on staff at the facility design exercises so lifelike that emergency personnel from around the world make the journey to Texas to train in this world-class environment.

In addition to emergency personnel training, Disaster City also serves as a test bed for response technology research, testing and assessment including robotic technologies. Domestic and international robots have been put through their paces in the man-made rubble piles and flattened buildings. Many of these robots are designed for search and rescue applications.

They are typically smaller than bomb squad robots, tethered and designed to endure vertical drops into spaces within the rubble where victims could be trapped.

In March 2011, Texas A&M University’s Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue hosted a Japanese Science and Technology Agency first responder workshop and exercise at Disaster City evaluating the use of robots for underground tunnel and mine rescue. The exercise featured approximately 30 researchers from Japan

The next major event for robotic systems at Disaster City is the National Institute of Science and Technology Response Robot Evaluation scheduled for 14-18 Nov., 2011. The most recent NIST exercise conducted in March 2010 drew more than 200 participants from around the globe specializing in emergency response and robotics. The purpose of the exercise is to refine the proposed standard test methods that robot developers can use to develop critical capabilities and measure system performance in ways that are relevant to the emergency response community. The 2011 exercise will focus on unmanned ground, air and maritime systems for emergency response applications.

While nothing can prevent natural disasters, facilities such as Disaster City ensure that emergency responders are armed with the most effective training and well tested equipment available. When it comes to rescue robots, it is imperative that these systems and their operators be trained and tested in real-world environments. Rigorous testing, training and evaluation ensure that when disaster strikes, the robots and responders are prepared for action.

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Behold BatCat

When it comes to police robots, the LAPD proves one size does not fit all

BY DANIELLE LUCEY

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he Los Angeles Police Department had the house surrounded, but there was no way of really knowing where the suspect was hiding.

A barricaded man had gone on a rampage, shooting one of the force’s own K-9 officers, striking him twice from inside the house but not killing him. As is typical of these suspects, Sergio O. Salazar, 53, chose to escape upward to the second floor of the Sylmar, Calif., house as the showdown continued, rifle at his side. What came next, he likely could have never imagined.

The LAPD had brought out its secret weapon for situations like this, a one-ofa-kind robot they’d designed themselves.

The 40,000-pound BatCat — an absolutely massive teleoperated beast fashioned off a Caterpillar Telehandler with a 54-foot telescoping arm — splintered the house, working it down in 5.5-foot sections, literally tearing the roof and walls off the place.

“It physically and remotely starting physically breaching, ripping apart the side of the house the suspect was taking cover in while he was shooting at the SWAT team, and it was able to rip out the walls,” says

Paul Robi, of the LAPD bomb squad.

“The suspect was able to be located by the SWAT team visually because [of] the BatCat — that old saying, no place to run, no place to hide.“ Now exposed to the scores of officers outside, Salazar was shot and killed without a single officer having to enter the house.

“It allowed the SWAT officers to stay in as safe of a position as possible while the BatCat went up and located the suspect,” says Robi. “The suspect shot the BatCat twice. … In a city with 4 million people, there’s always someone who’s upset at somebody else.”

Though the LAPD has an arsenal of four robotic systems, Robi calls on the BatCat, short for Bomb Assault Tactical Control Assessment Tool, when brawn and size truly do matter.

“It’s the ultimate dream as far as the bomb technician,” says Robi. “To have something that if you have some suspect out here on the 405 Freeway, it’s the busiest freeway in the world, if you have some nut holding himself hostage in his car, you can literally pick him up in the car together and drive them off to an underground parking

The LAPD’s BatCat is a roboticized Catepillar Telehandler. Photo courtesy LAPD.

structure and open up the freeway, physically remove the threat.”

BatCat begins The BatCat was borne from a heavy equipment operator and bomb squad reserve officer, Roy McKee, in the early 1990s, explains Robi.

“The city was going to mothball a forklift and he said, ‘Hey if you’re going to get rid of this thing, can I have it? I’d like to outfit it for the bomb squad,’” says Robi.

Tinkering away in his garage with the Caterpillar Telehandler and wares from many trips to RadioShack, McKee emerged with one of the largest teleoperated robots out there. The system got its test in 1997 when a truck bomb outfitted with thousands of pounds of dynamite parked outside a local news station, with suspects threatening to blow it up.

“They ripped it apart remotely with the robotic forklift the reserve officer had literally converted in his garage, so that’s where the original thinking, the idea, came from,” says Robi. Convinced of the technology, but desiring some fine tuning and better user interfaces, the LAPD approached Northrop Grumman’s Remotec division to create a professional version of the robot.

“We ran the idea by them, ‘Hey, would you be willing to develop the software where you could outfit a commercially produced product from Caterpillar and make it … essentially a robot?’ And they thought about it, and they agreed to do it,” says Robi.

And because the LAPD were part of mak-

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The BatCat tears apart a house to gain access to a suspect. Photo courtesy LAPD.

ing the system from the ground up, they had a say in how the controls could look, fashioning them so they were similar to the force’s Andros robot — also from Northrop Grumman Remotec — which the force has been using for 15 years.

“It’s similar to the Andros because all our guys already know how to use the Andros controls, so when Remotec designed the control panel here with our input, its very similar. … Remotec sent the project to Autonomous Solutions … and they’re the ones that actually developed the software and physically outfitted Caterpillar’s product and essentially turned it into a 40,000-pound remote-controlled robot,” he says.

Aside from being able to turn houses into toothpicks, BatCat can also deliver tear gas and hot gas, says Robi. Though the LAPD are the only ones with the system right now, the U.S. Army has come out to look at the system, and Robi says Brazil wants to order some to keep the peace during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

LAPD’s family of robots Despite all the accolades Robi shines on BatCat, bomb squad robotics is not a one-size-fits-all situation.

“The bottom line is that the thing is, you never know what type of device you’re going to find,” says Robi. “Is it a large vehicle bomb?

You know, what did they make the large vehicle bomb out of?

[With] a lot of the countermeasures now the thing is, can you deliver your countermeasure? Because if it’s a car bomb, that’s 3 or 4 feet off the ground, but if the device is now a truck bomb, can you raise your countermeasure, physically on site lift it up, and even access the suspect’s item?”

For all these different scenarios, the force has a different robot, ranging all the way down to Applied Research Associates’ 18-pound Pointman.

“The Pointman is so small that it can drive under a car,” says Robi.

“If you have a device located underneath, you can drive the Pointman under. … It all depends on what type of call you’re going on, and once again, you never know how big the device is or where it’s going to be located.”

The Andros and QinetiQ North America Talon round out the robotic arsenal. Though they’re similarly sized, Robi says the LAPD will use the Andros for situations that require more fine manipulation skills, while the Talon is used for its down-range camera abilities.

“We’re very fortunate to have so many different types of robots depending on what type of situation you’re faced with,” says Robi.

Danielle Lucey is managing editor of Mission Critical.

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END USERS

Robin Murphy 11 March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. [For more information, see Page 9.] CRASAR worked with the National Science Foundation and the International Rescue Systems Institute to inspect damage at Japanese ports and the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. Murphy herself completed two different robotics missions in Japan after the natural disasters and chronicled the events on her director’s blog for CRASAR. Robin Murphy speaks at AUVSI Day on Capitol Hill in 2010. AUVSI photo.

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obin Murphy began her career in robotics as a graduate student at Georgia Tech University working under Ron Arkin. But she initially didn’t see herself as a robot person.

“I thought [artificial intelligence] for robotics was stupid but the alternative,” Murphy admits. “Within two months I had fallen in love with robotics and artificial intelligence, and I’ve never thought of doing anything else.”

Now, as director of the Center for Robotic Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University, she’s seen the role that unmanned systems have played in disaster settings for nearly a decade. CRASAR has seen a need for robots at 15 disasters, five of which occurred outside the U.S., since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Ground, aerial and sea robotics have been used internationally since the World Trade Center collapse,” Murphy says. “I’ve been to over a dozen disasters myself. The MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] has used robotics at several mine disasters. Land, sea and aerial vehicles of all sizes are available. It’s more [about] matching the robots to the specific objectives of each agency or team.”

Recently, Murphy’s team traveled to Japan to help with relief efforts after the 44

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“I think partnerships between academia, industry and agencies are essential,” Murphy says. “Industry can incorporate the advances being made by academia to meet the needs of agencies.”

One of the needs that stands out to Murphy is the demand for better sensor technology in first responder robots. For instance, the remotely operated vehicles used in Japan use sonars, which makes it difficult to interpret data or “see” in murky waters. In the air, Honeywell’s T-Hawk unmanned air vehicle had video capabilities but no radar or range system for obstacle avoidance.

can be a snake and wiggle into areas, claw openings in the rubble, have all the advantages of legged locomotion and fantastic balance as the rubble shifts,” Murphy says.

Beyond technology, the industry needs to come up with innovative ways to drive down the cost of producing these search and rescue robots. Murphy explains that funding for these systems has traditionally come from the federal government. Roboticists typically use government money to pay for any system that costs more than $30,000, but Murphy says first responder robots tend to cost between $50,000 and $150,000.

“I think partnerships between academia, industry and agencies are essential. Industry can incorporate the advances being made by academia to meet the needs of agencies.”

- Robin Murphy

“Everyone always starts by creating new forms of mobility but ignores sensing, keeping sensors clean, sensor fusion, perception … all of which impact the ability for the robot to operate intelligently or to assist with understanding and mission tasks,” Murphy says.

“The future of the industry depends on government funding,” Murphy says. “The size of the pool of money and the duration will influence the industry. I’d like to see a large pool set aside for 10 years to allow response teams to upgrade every three years, just like the computers they are.”

Murphy says sensory improvements should happen in two stages. First, roboticists must tackle the issue of what Murphy calls “perception at a distance,” which allows the robot to interact with victims and the environment. Next, robots must master “action at a distance,” moving through rubble while providing accurate sensing, location and mapping data. Murphy points to Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Tech as prime examples of these developments.

For CRASAR, Murphy sees opportunities for growth in the education sector and through the program Roboticists Without Borders. CRASAR members used to offer numerous rescue awareness classes in the wake of 9/11. They have also collaborated with Japanese roboticists in three robotics events in the last 10 years.

“I still want a robot ferret, something that

“But as the money for rescue robots never materialized and the standards for robots have not been finalized, interest faded,” Murphy says. “But Japan has reignited interest.”

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