Shape of things to comeSearch and rescure robot competition
DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate sponsors fourth search and rescue robot competition next week
We wrote several stories about DARPA’s Urban Challenge competition, in which computer-driven cars had to navigate a treacherous 130-mile course in the Mojave Desert (PBS also aired a fascinationg show on the competition). There is another intriguing competition afoot, this one sponsored by the intellectually restless Science and Technology Directorate at DHS: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) engineers are putting together the fourth in a series of Response Robot Evaluation Exercises for urban search and rescue (US&R) responders. It will be held 18-22 June 2007 at Texas A&M’s Disaster City training facility in College Station, Texas.
The competition would test robot performance on emerging standard test methods using actual training scenarios for first responders and emergency personnel. The results will be used to refine the test methods, and to develop usage guides that match specific kinds of US&R robots to particular disaster scenarios.
This exercise will use two Disaster City training scenarios. The first will be a simulated structural collapse of a municipal building. This scenario will make it possible for responders to deploy robots to search for victims and assist in making the structure safe for responders to extricate those victims. The robots will have quite a challenge here: Moving around tight corners and in confined spaces, travelling over collapsed walls and piles of rubble.
The second scenarios with which the robots will have to cope is a disater involving a train wreck/derailment — one caused by a collision of a passenger train and an industrial HAZMAT tanker train carrying unknown substances. This demanding scenario will ask the robots to move about the wreckage scene, look in windows to locate victims trapped inside collapsed cars, find hazardous leaks, and identify tanker placards describing their contents. Some of the robos will be tasked to take samples of the unknown substances for analysis and identification.
Our advise to investors: Be there. As is the case with UAVs, there is a general move toward unmanned systems to perform difficult and dangerous tasks on the battlefield and in disaster areas. The competition would highlight the capabilities security agencies would want to see in future unmanned systems, and would also showcase the abilities of companies already active in the field.
