Search and rescue robots invade Disaster City®

"Negotiator" through its paces on a collapsed structure at Disaster City®.

TEEX co-hosted the fourth in a series of Response Robot Evaluation Exercises for urban search and rescue (US&R) responders on June 18-22, 2007, at Disaster City®.  Emergency responders from 16 states arrived in College Station, TX to test 20 different robots using two realistic training scenarios. The goal was to determine which kinds of US&R robots are best-suited to particular tasks in disaster scenarios.

The event is organized by engineers with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate. In addition to TEEX, the event was co-hosted by Texas A&M Engineering and Texas Task Force 1. A previous robot evaluation exercise was hosted at Disaster City® in April 2006.

This year, responders deployed robots to a simulated structural collapse of a municipal building and a train wreck/derailment. Robots deployed with a variety of sensors, including laser scanners, color cameras, two-way audio transmitters, thermal imagers, chemical sensors, 3D mapping systems and GPS locators paired with geographic information systems (GIS).