DEE, Kyle David, A. 2012-30610
STS THY Individual Project
Robots
for Emergency Response
On
December 26, 2004, a 9.3 Magnitude earthquake centred off the west coast of
Sumatra set off a tsunami that killed 240,000 people. On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima
I nuclear power plant at Fukushima Prefecture encounters a catastrophic failure
that causes a meltdown and becomes the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl
in 1986. These two (2) disasters have something in common. They opened the eyes
of people to the glaring truth that today’s standards of emergency response is
simply not enough to cope with the numerous disasters that grip our world. The
world simply cannot rely on fire fighters, paramedics, and policemen to risk
their lives saving others. There has to be another solution to our emergency
response woes, and the solution to that are robots.
Two
pioneering organizations in the field of emergency response robots are DHARPA
and Honda. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese authorities were
criticised for not utilizing their massive technological resources in emergency
response robots. Honda, however, has answered the call of the people for
emergency response robots. A veteran in the field of robotics, Honda is now on
the development phase of a new generation of robots designed to negotiate
through collapsed buildings as well as operate levers, valves and switches. It can
do this thanks to its humanoid design patterned after ASIMO. These humanoids
have the mobility of human beings as well as have hands modelled after human
beings. These robots are designed to mimic the effectiveness of fire fighters
while keeping them out of harm’s way.[1]
Another
organization, DARPA, has developed a 6 foot 2 inch humanoid robot designed to
respond to natural or man-made disasters. The ATLAS, as it is called, is an
autonomous robot that has an innovative feature, modular wrists. This feature
allows ATLAS to have “add-ons” attached to him to specialize it for different
needs (i.e. a saw can be attached to clear trees in a mudslide whereas a hose
can be attached when fighting fires). DARPA main objective in producing ATLAS
is to eliminate casualties to the emergency response teams that are first on
disaster zones. Another key feature of ATLAS is that it does not need to be
remote controlled, which comes in handy in areas where the terrain may render
radio communication useless. The robot’s head is fitted with LIDAR, a remote
sensing technology that uses a LASER to measure distance.[2]
Despite
all these advances on the use of robots for emergency response, there are still
some major hurdles that it has to overcome before being accepted by society. A
major factor would be the lack of a conscience. As can be seen in the movie I, Robot, a robot is designed to help
the person or respond to a situation where the probability of success is high
and not based on whether the person that ends up getting abandoned is a child
or whether the disaster that the robots do not respond to wipes out half a
country. There has to still be an element of human control and until artificial
intelligence is developed to a level at par with that of a human brain, it is
going to be a long time before anyone sees a robot save a damsel in distress from
a burning building.
[1]
Falconer, Jason. 11 June 2013. “Honda Developing Disaster Response Robot Based
on ASIMO.” <http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/honda-new-disaster-humanoid-robot>
9 March 2014.
[2]
Kelly, Heather. 16 July 2013. “Meet DARPA’s 6’2” Disaster-Response Robot.” CNN.
<http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/16/meet-darpas-62-disaster-response-robot/>
9 March 2014.
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