Urban Search and Rescue Robots: From Tragedy to Technology

Just after 9:15 a.m. on 11 September 2001, retired Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch began organizing a group of expert robot researchers and manufacturers to visit the devastation in a search and rescue mission. Blitch, who is director of the nonprofit Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) in Colorado, immediately called on longtime colleague Robin Murphy, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of South Florida (USF). By 12 September, teams from robot manufacturers Foster-Miller and iRobot, and the Navy robot lab Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) joined Blitch and Murphy. The combined technology of these groups’ robots (see Table 1) offered light, sound, communication potential, color and infrared video, global positioning, mapping, and sonar, biological, and chemical detection (see Figure 1 and 2). With these tools and the volunteer teams of researcher–rescuers who were on site for up to four weeks, more than 10 victims were found—more than 2 percent of victims discovered. “The experience at Ground Zero showed we were pretty much on track,” Murphy says. “The real success is that the robots were there and that they were accepted. Success is that robots will soon become like search dogs in the minds of the rescue community: essential.” Murphy hopes the work at Ground Zero will attract other researchers in mobility, perception, networks, human–robot interaction, and intelligent assistance. Indeed, the tragedy is likely to propel search and rescue robotics into its next stage, just as the Kobe earthquake and the Oklahoma City bombing were the catalysts for this research domain.