going into a structure fire is like
taking away all of your senses if I has
broken out at the historic no Troodon
Cathedral you can't see anything
literally your hand in front of your
face we've now got around a hundred
firefighters trying to put this place
out the hardest part for us is not
seeing and now we have eyes on the
ground then we have eyes from above you
can see every amount of behind when
disaster strikes we were lying on first
responders to rush in to save lives and
property today the full scale of the
destruction in Mexico City has been
revealed these environments are beyond
dangerous and there are only so many
first responders available for any
disaster and the flooding here is
getting worse after waters from Lake
Pontchartrain broke through a levee now
robots are joining the battle throwing
their metal and plastic bodies into
harm's way to help save human lives
these are the rescue bots welcome to
uprising fear not the robots are already
here back in the day this job was a lot
more blue-collar it was a heavy use of
saws axes ladders and hoes and that was
the basic tools of every firefighter
low-technology just put a hose in your
hand and you go in and you fight the
fire to be honest it started out as
pretty much a hobby
I saw a camera in the air and it was a
remote control and you know I'm kind of
a tech nerd so I picked one up and I
bring it in to work and we would use it
as a training tool to be able to get an
aerial view of things that we were doing
from there it kind of morphed into what
if we use it on structure fire all right
coming up then what if we use them on
rescue incidents to where it is now
pretty much we'll use on almost any kind
of incident that isn't an EMS call as an
incident commander all of our decisions
we're usually making off of what we get
on the radio now I get to see the smoke
condition
and being able to read smoke from the
drone is just a huge tactical advantage
putting out a fire is only one aspect of
a fire operation understanding the scope
of the fire where the other first
responders are situated and even where
to park all the vehicles are all
essential aspects of fighting fires
the Fremont Fire Department has
partnered with local police to help them
track criminals or search for missing
persons often by using the drones
infrared capabilities Fremont police use
a special technology to help find a
missing East Bay student police and fire
departments are experimenting with all
the ways in which drones might be useful
including in water rescues and
recoveries here we've had multiple
vehicles into the water and any time the
water gets that high it becomes
extremely dangerous so now we can put up
a drone do a search without ever having
to put people in the water
loot wad oh no - damn it on Flom la
flesche de la catedral de Luci finding
that fire and nature Dom that was the
first time I've seen that robot in use
and without that I don't think they
would have been able to save the primary
portion of that structure I think that
robotics in itself is definitely the
future of firefighting at Virginia Tech
Alexander Lee Anessa and his students
developed a firefighting robot to
compete in a DARPA Robotics Challenge in
this case the Thor was designed to
navigate rush ship find a fire using a
whole suite of sensors from infrared
cameras thermal sensor to actually find
the fire then recognize a hose grab the
hose and extinguish the fire ship's a
difficult environment to navigate there
are pretty steep steps there are doors
to open so the idea of having a humanoid
robot is that he can navigate through
the same kind of environment that was
designed for humans but without risking
anybody's life now the question always
that as roboticist we need to ask
ourselves is is the humanoid the the
best one to reach those environments
[Music]
the name of my lab is the bio robotics
lab the name bio robotics comes from the
fact that a lot of robots we work on
have this inspiration from biology the
animal kingdom is full of non-human
animals that have been quite successful
doing tasks that we can't for example a
snake can thread through a tightly
packed volume and get to places that we
can't one of my favorite applications is
to assist rescue workers as the robot
goes through the collapse trouble it can
do without disturbing its surroundings
this is of critical importance because
the collapse trouble is likely to be
unstable so one can envision a scenario
where the rescue worker moves as forward
as possible into the rubble pile then
because of whatever mobility challenges
drops a control case that steers the
snake robots and then drives the snake
robot beyond his particular reach
[Music]
right now it's usually two operators and
a tether handler handling one robots
that ratio is wrong I envision a future
where one operator will be able to
control five perhaps 20 robots at once
but I think it's a little bit more
exciting than that I believe that as
each of these robots move through the
rubble they'll be able to use modern
machine learning techniques to learn
from those experiences and they'll be
able to share their experiences so when
when robots learns from experience all
the robots can learn I'm sad to say
we're not working as hard as we could be
or should be on this problem response
for robots is not the most well funded
activity because people only care about
it the day after the disaster and then a
week or so afterwards they forgot about
it technology for first responders has
been accelerated by the consumer goods
industry and academia but with success
stories like the Fremont Fire Department
the adoption and development of new
tools are increasing three years ago
when we first officially went live on
our program we were one of only three
departments in this state that we're
doing it until we went out and we flew
on a couple of incidents they just
thought we were out there flying and
playing with our toys now everybody
wants to be part of the program you know
they're asking form on different
incidents and ten years from now I think
every Fire Department police department
across the nation will either have
drones or will be looking to get drones
now this technology provides us a level
of safety for our crews that hasn't been
seen before if we can keep somebody from
losing their life with the use of
technology why would we not do it thanks
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