Urban Search and Rescue

Introduction

The INL has been involved for several years in developing and testing a robotic system for urban search and rescue (USAR). Much of this work has been motivated by recent disasters such as the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Recently, the INL competed in an international search and rescue competition sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Not only did the INL robot win first place in the competition, it was able to enter areas inaccessible to other competitors and was able to reliably identify the “victims” ID tags, their location within the building and whether they were still “alive.” INL ’s best run was more than double the score (based on speed, ground covered, and “victims” found) of the next highest competitor’s.