Flying robot search and rescue

Flight Journal, Dec 1998 by Atwood, Tom

Will the offspring of this robot save your life? For the past seven years, the world has watched remarkable technical progress emerge from "aerial robotics" competitions organized by professor Robert Michelson of Georgia Tech. In these competitions, collegiate teams backed by industry and government field increasingly sophisticated, autonomous flying robots that are capable of doing their own "thinking" while conducting operations normally carried out by humans. One such use is portrayed here by Southern Polytechnic State University's competition entrant flying in front of flames at the Hazardous Materials Management and Emergency Response (HAMMER) facility near the Hanford Nuclear site in Richland, Washington.

That competition was a qualifier for the "Millennial Event," an aerial robotics competition to be held in the year 2000. The concept of developing a flying robot that is able not only to fly to a precise location unaided but also to then carry out a relatively complex mission without human intervention has generated some wildly diverse approaches to the many problems involved. The Millennial Event will carry the mission concept one step farther in that it will involve finding and rescuing persons (their roles being portrayed by yet another series of automated robots/dummies) immediately after a simulated catastrophe in which an urban area has been decimated by earthquake, tsunami and wind. Sounds like a soon-to-be released major TV movie starring R2-D2 and C-3PO ....

Millennial competitors will compete in suitably catastrophic environments that will force the flying robots to contend with wreckage, fire, smoke, aerosols, acoustic shock waves and continually changing situations that feature both "briefed" and "unbriefed" obstacles. Points will be accrued for performing tasks that would normally have to be done by human search-and-rescue teams.

Various "qualifiers" will occur in 1998 and 1999 that must be passed to become a finalist. Up to $30,000 will be awarded to the Millennial Event winner(s), but the real winners will be those whose lives may be saved by the technologies that it is anticipated will evolve from the competitions.

Michelson is professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, past president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, International (AUVSI) and specialist in miniature flight technologies. For more information, see his website at: http://avdil.gtri.gatech.edu/AUVS/IARCLaunchPoint.html.