Robots to the rescue

Lecture presented on Thursday, December 2, 2010, 11:00 am at the Ferst Center for the Arts on the Georgia Tech Campus.Robin Roberson Murphy is the Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University and directs the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue and its Roboticists Without Borders program. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (1980), and a master’s degree (1989), and a Ph.D. in computer science (1992), all from Georgia Tech. She has more than one hundred publications in artificial intelligence, robotics, and human-robot interactions, including the textbooks Introduction to AI Robotics and AI in Mobile Robots (cited by Michael Crichton in his bestseller Prey). In 2008, she was awarded the AI Aube Outstanding Contributor Award by the AUVSI Foundation for founding the field of rescue robotics. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and serves on numerous governmental boards, including the Defense Science Board.Runtime: 63:33 minutesWhy doesn’t FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) or MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) use those “Hurt Locker” robots or Department of Defense unmanned aerial vehicles? Is having the Terminator crawl toward you a Good Thing? Once snake/cockroach/fly robots are perfected, rescue robotics is solved, right? Or is it making the robots fully autonomous? How many robots do you need for a disaster like a building collapse: 10? 100? This talk will answer these questions and discuss other surprises in the nascent field of rescue robotics based on fifteen years of research experience with rescue robots supplemented by the insertion of ground, air, and sea robots for urban search and rescue (US&R) into eleven disasters, including the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, Hurricanes Katrina and Charley, and the Crandall Canyon Utah mine collapse. Extensive video will be shown as the talk explores how robots can reduce deaths, accelerate damage assessment, and minimize economic downtime after a disaster