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CNN Saturday Morning News

Technology Aids in Rescue Operations

Aired September 29, 2001 - 07:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We want to talk about some of the more interesting technology being used down at ground zero in the live picture you just saw.

To Ann Kellan in Atlanta, who is watching this. Ann, good morning to you.

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

How about urban search and rescue robots? Within hours after the planes hit the World Trade Center, teams of researchers were packing their vans with robots and driving -- because there was no air travel at the time -- to New York to help search the piles of rubble. Three teams armed with 16 robots showed up, one team from Florida, two from Massachusetts, all members of an organization called CRASAR, Center for Robot and Assisted Search and Rescue.

Now, we have an account by one of the robot team leaders, Robin Murphy, on what these robots look like and what they were able to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBIN MURPHY, CRASAR TEAM LEADER: We go out with the firemen. The firemen would make the decision as to whether -- if they needed this technology, a void might open up. For instance, when all the cranes are removing the rubble, suddenly a hole would open up. The rescue squad leader would say, Ah, we need to look at it, but it's unstable. We don't want to put a person in, we don't even want to stick our head in. Let's get one of the robots.

Notice that these things are the shape of a -- you know, about the size of a shoebox, so this allowed the robots to do things that humans and dogs could not do.

This is day one. They're inserting it into a sewer pipe, and they found two victims down in that area. You know, they're just looking for anything to look into.

We were routinely going 20 to 40 feet into the rubble pile, and the firemen started nicknaming this a camera on wheels, which, as you can see, there is a camera, but there's no wheels. This is all track vehicle, sort of like a mini-tank.

This one can change its shape. All of them have cameras, lights, and they have two-way audio, so if you could have heard a survivor, if they were banging against the pipe or had any type of noise, likewise we could have talked to them.

So we had about eight robots that actually got used. We found five victims, one set of remains. We were able to show the firemen that one void was safe for humans to enter and well worth exploring. Later on in the day, they cut some rebar, got into there, and found another victim. They also found that one void was unsafe and uninteresting. It wasn't worth excavating in that area.

Very positive response from the firemen. One team called and said, OK, we want to buy four of them. Where do we place the order? We expect these to be like -- you know how dogs work. At first everybody was like, dogs for search and rescue? Dogs? And now they are standard. We expect these tools to be the same way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KELLAN: And now the robots have another job. They're helping structural engineers examine the slurry wall, the structure below the World Trade Center buildings, going basically where no man or woman dare venture unless the robots' view deems it safe -- Bill.

HEMMER: Ann, are there any drawbacks to using this type of technology? We just saw the pluses, but are there minuses also?

KELLAN: Really none that we can see. I mean, they have to be on this tether, and that -- you know, every now and then the tether would get stuck, or because of the heat, the wheels got melted or -- There's some -- probably some mechanical difficulties, but these robots are fairly new, and they are just -- this is really the first time they've really gone into debris like this for -- looking for humans.

And I'm sure there's going to be a lot of tweaking of these robots in the future.

HEMMER: All right, Ann. Ann Kellan from Atlanta, interesting technology indeed. Thank you, Ann.

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