Article Abstracts | September 2007
The complete article appears in the September 2007 issue of Photonics Spectra. If you do not have a copy of this issue,
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In a Disaster, Robots Go Where Humans Cannot
Sensors let robots assess a disaster scene and detect trapped people.
by Hank Hogan, Contributing Editor
Disaster City, a 52-acre training facility in College Station, Texas, was the setting for a mock-disaster exercise in June. Train wrecks, collapsed buildings and piles of rubble with realistic signatures sprinkled throughout to help rescuers locate and identify the “victims” all had been planned as part of a drill to school emergency responders in how to use the latest robotics.
The exercise was the fourth sponsored by the Science and Technology Standards Program of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Another objective of these staged events — managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md., for DHS — is to help NIST refine standards and devise tests to qualify rescue robots...
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