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USF robots sought survivors in World Trade Center rubble
By LINDA GIBSON
© St. Petersburg Times, TAMPA -- When the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed in 1995, there was no such thing as an urban search-and-rescue robot. Within days of the terrorist attacks this month, six of the small robots and four human handlers from the University of South Florida arrived at the World Trade Center to help search for survivors. Crawling into holes or lowered through pipes in the rubble, the robots found five bodies and one set of remains, but no survivors. "This was the first known use of robots for urban search and rescue," said professor Robin Murphy, who directs USF's perceptual robotics laboratory. "These were going places you couldn't put a dog or a person in." She began work on search-and-rescue robots after the Oklahoma City bombing. Technology for them existed, but nobody had put together the components. Working with federal grants, Murphy and her graduate students researched how the machines could be used, provided manufacturers with design specs and began testing various models in the field. The model Murphy displayed at a news conference Thursday is a VGTV by Inuktun, a Canadian company. About the size of a shoe box, it's basically a camera on wheels covered by tread so it can climb rough terrain. Its shape can be altered to fit different spaces, and the camera can be manipulated to look in different directions. Two headlights show the operator what the robot "sees" as it crawls along. Murphy likened the view to a mouse looking through a straw. Most models have two-way audio so rescuers can hear and talk to people who are trapped. The larger models, about the size of a suitcase, can carry food, water or medicine to people awaiting rescue. None of the bodies found by the USF robots have been identified because the bodies could not be reached, Murphy said. The bodies, covered by ash and dust, looked like the victims of a volcanic explosion, she said. Ten other search-and-rescue robots, on loan from the Navy and other manufacturers, also were used at the World Trade Center. Murphy said rescuers didn't take to them right away. "There's been some resistance in the fire-rescue community," Murphy said. Robots, the thinking goes, are too expensive, too complicated to operate and not proved effective. So Murphy and her three students snagged any rescuer they could and explained: We can train you to use this in 15 minutes, or one of us can go along. After four days, they were routinely included, she said. They would board a bus picking up rescuers at 6:30 each morning and head out for a 12-hour shift. As they got to within three blocks of where the twin towers had stood, they noticed a couple of inches of pulverized dust covered every surface. Papers from the towers had been jammed by the blast into every crevice of fire escapes, trees and buildings. And what looked like tinsel on the trees turned out to be window blinds blown out of offices and twisted among the branches. Murphy believes the performance of the robots convinced fire-rescue workers of their usefulness. Although they cost between $10,000 and $40,000 each, she expects search-and-rescue robots will become standard equipment in fire departments around the country.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
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