Military robots win search and rescue competition as they search for survivors in underground power plant after gas leak

Daily Mail UK ^ | Michael THompsen

[BenLurkin]

Scientists convened on an unfinished underground power plant in Elma, Washington to test a group of autonomous military robots in a simulated disaster scenario.

The winning team came from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a 60 person crew that oversaw a group of 12 robots they'd programmed through an initiative called Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots (CoSTAR).

CoSTAR’s robots autonomously explored the underground plant, which had been designed to simulate an urban disaster environment with a carbon dioxide leak and warm air vent.

The robot group included Spot, the famous four-legged product of Boston Dynamics that was loosely modeled after a dog, as well as flying drones and a group of rolling robots in spherical metal frames.

The robots were tasked with tracking down 20 unique targets, including a warm mannequin simulating a disaster survivor, and a lost cell phone, which they located by tracing its Wi-Fi signal.

[TaxPayer2000]

To the winning team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

[Jotmo]

Let me be the fist to say that I, for one, welcome our new SubTerranean Autonomous Robot overlords.

[sauropod]

.

[Secret Agent Man]

I wanted to be the fist to say that... /s

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I hope someone is developing an artificial “snake” which could be loosed in an earthquake disaster and which would seek out victims - alive or dead - and notify rescuers of their locations.

Obviously you would want many scores - perhaps hundreds - of them for in the aftermath of a significant earthquake.

They would have heat and sound sensors, perhaps CO₂ concentration sniffers, and would have a payload of at least a phone and GPS.