GETTING THE WORD OUT

OPINION INTERVIEW
Robot rescue?
We’re ready to roll
From lifeguards to reconnaissance drones, robots are already helping
save lives. It’s time they took their place in the rescuer’s toolbox,
argues Robin Murphy
What motivated you to get into rescue robotics?
The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. At the
time, robots were being made very small and
agile, but rescue robots were golf-cart-sized
devices or things developed for the nuclear
industry that weighed tonnes. They could only
go on top of the rubble, not into it. But there
might be people trapped deep inside that you
could save if you could just get to them within
48 hours. Small robots, the size of a suitcase or
lunch box, would clearly have been of benefit.
Two decades on, what’s your approach?
At the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and
Rescue, our Roboticists Without Borders
programme finds robot-makers willing to
donate their robots and expertise to us. We
essentially audition the robots, large or small,
for a spot on our team. We develop potential
uses for the machines we select, making them
smarter and adaptable for a variety of disaster
scenarios. Right now we have about 20 types of
ground, air and sea robots, many at my lab in
storage cases, ready for deployment when
something bad happens.
Have you deployed a rescue robot recently?
Yes. When we heard about refugees drowning
off the coast of Greece we called Tony
Mulligan, CEO of a company called
Hydronalix, which makes remote-controlled
lifeguarding marine robots called EMILYs. He
said, “I will take two experts and two EMILYs
to Greece.” I met him out there in January.
He donated the robots, one to the Hellenic
Coast Guard and one to the Hellenic Red Cross.
Why is it dangerous for refugees to land boats
on Greek shores?
They have bad motors and bad boats that are
overloaded, and the wind conditions in that
channel can suddenly change. The shores are
also very rocky. If you find a good beach, great,
but if you hit a bad stretch of shore, there’s no
way to get off the boat or for anyone to come
and rescue you from the rocks, so you are
trapped. Roughly 600 people died last year.
How does a marine robot help?
One way is to get the refugee boats to follow
an EMILY to a better shore. These robots have
cameras and two-way radios to allow rescue
boats to communicate with the people in peril.
The robot can also deploy a flotation device if
the boat goes down. Finally, if a boat gets stuck
on a rocky piece of coast, EMILY can run a line
out so they can clip it in tight around their
boat and let one of the bigger boats pull them
back out to safety – we saw that a lot. In short,
we are preventing drownings.
Are you working on any developments to these
lifesaving robots?
Yes, more automation. EMILYs are remotecontrolled,
but what we would like to be able
to do is have a lifeguard look at the video feed
from EMILY’s onboard camera and say, “Over
there, that’s the cluster of people I want you
to assist”, just by circling on the screen.
What other rescue situations have you
attended with robots?
We helped after mudslides engulfed a rural
community in Oso, Washington, killing more
than 40 people in 2014. In one day we went
out and flew a reconnaissance drone over
the mudslides to get high-resolution images
from angles that crewed helicopters and
satellites could not. We flew above the area for
48 minutes and processed the data on a laptop
PROFILE
Robin Murphy is director
of the Centre for Robot-
Assisted Search and
Rescue at Texas A&M
University in College
Station, where she is
Raytheon professor of
computer science and
engineering
Standing by:
Murphy and an
iRobot ground vehicle
while we were driving back to the incident
command centre. We were able to give them
a high-resolution 3D representation of the
entire area fast. As a result, it became obvious
to the hydrologist where the river had shifted
to, where the lowest points were and where
was the best place to create a flood-bypass
channel to prevent further catastrophe.
What technological advancements with rescue
robots are you most anticipating?
So far everything’s been focused on what
robots see, but what they feel is important to
us as well, so I’m looking forward to robots
with a sense of touch. It’s really hard to clean
the dirt off a trapped survivor in order to start
using infrared techniques to see their blood
28 | NewScientist | 2 April 2016