Robots to the Rescue
Engineering Researchers Develop Autonomous Drones, ‘Dogs’ to Deliver Aid at Disaster Scenes
By Wynne Parry
lllustrations by Matthieu Forichon
By combining robotics, automation and artificial intelligence (AI), Maryland Engineering researchers and students are building solutions that can help save lives, protect property and safeguard the environment.
One such system, RoboScout, the University of Maryland’s entry in a competition run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), would rapidly survey and assess injuries at sites of disasters or violence. The information RoboScout is designed to collect could help first responders prioritize medical care. The ambitious project, while in its early stages, is an innovative step toward autonomous systems to help as many people as possible survive such events.
In the future, the researchers say, autonomous rescue systems could make complex decisions based on data, observed injuries and medical resources; move victims to safety, which would also help protect first responders from hazardous conditions; and attach sensors to the injured to provide continuous updates on their condition.
Here’s how RoboScout could work.
Step 1: Arrival
At the site of disaster or violence, medical personnel set up the RoboScout system, which consists of drones custom-built by Maryland engineers, robot “dogs” and a base station that runs sophisticated AI models.
Step 2: Initial Survey
The operator launches drones equipped with visible light and infrared (or thermal) cameras. The location of each person they identify appears on a map on the base station’s monitor.
Step 3: A Closer Look
The drones hover closer to those injured. Their sensors collect essential health data on bleeding, traumatic injury and difficulty breathing, and send it to one of the base station’s AI models called an inference engine.
Step 4: On the Ground
The robot dogs are dispatched to those injured to collect more information using their cameras and radar sensors. A type of AI system called a large language model that is located on the dogs can talk to the injured person through the dogs’ two-way radio.
Step 5: Report
The inference engine weighs observations from the drones and dogs to assess each person’s injuries, like a first responder would. “We’re trying to recapture the performance of a human medic assessing injuries, and scale it to situations that are dangerous or where there aren’t enough medics to look at everybody in the first 10 minutes,” said Derek Paley, director of the Maryland Robotics Center and RoboScout’s team leader.
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