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CNN Saturday Morning News

Robots Help Recovery Efforts at WTC Site

Aired September 29, 2001 - 10:48   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: The big machinery has moved in, but if you go back to the 12th of September, the day after the attacks, there was some high technology used to help rescue five people saved the day after. This morning our science correspondent Ann Kellan tracking this and more, with some new technology in the form of a robot.

Ann has more now.

Ann good morning.

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: Lots of different robots -- good morning Bill.

Just hours after those planes hit the World Trade Center towers, teams from Massachusetts to Florida were loading their robots into vans and driving, because they couldn't fly -- that wasn't the option -- to the World Trade Center. So robots are now part of the emergency team, members of CRASAR -- that's Center for Robot and Assisted Search and Rescue. Many of these robots were developed for the military and are now helping firemen and emergency crews search debris.

Now, one of the team members, Robin Murphy was on the scene, and she tells us about the robots and what they've been able to do so far.

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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: Now, their jobs aren't over yet; the robots have another task. They are now going underground to help structural engineers get a closer look at the slurry wall. There has been concern the structure below the World Trade Center buildings may be unstable.

Now, before crews go in, the idea is that the robots, which are more dispensable than people, will check it out first -- Bill.

HEMMER: Ann, you say this is the first time the rose bot -- those robots, rather, have ever been used?

KELLAN: They've been used, but this is the first time for human search and rescue that they have been used in a civilian sense. So they are members of the team now, it seems.

HEMMER: Members of the team, indeed. Ann, thanks; Ann Kellan. Very interesting report there.

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