Rescue Robot Demonstrated for Mine Disasters

Australian mining researchers working cooperatively with rescue roboticists in the United States have created a miniature rescue robot for mine disasters and demonstrated its operation at a training mine 15 meters underground in Queensland. The robot is designed for rescue operations such as the Quecreek Mine disaster that occurred on July 25, 2003, near Somerset, Pennsylvannia. The size of a tall cookie jar, the robot can crawl down a small hole drilled from the surface into the mine and then crawl through rubble and mud using its sensors to find trapped miners and to sniff the air for toxic or flammable gases, as well as pull tubing to carry warm air and liquids to trapped miners. Other robots have been designed to map mines, since it was a faulty map that led to the Quecreek disaster, but this is the first robot to be designed specifically for miner rescue.

The robot base, dubbed Simbot, is made by Inuktun Services of Canada and was originally designed for crawling inside of pipes on a 100 foot tether. The robot belongs to the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at the University of South Florida in Tampa. CRASAR purchased and modified the robot under a grant from the National Science Foundation to be able to crawl through rubble as well as up and down pipes. CRASAR coordinated the use of small robots at the World Trade Center collapse on Sept. 11, 2001, which the first known use of robots for urban search and rescue. The Safety In Mines Testing & Research Station (SIMTARS) in Queensland, Australia, contacted CRASAR about possible robots for mine disasters in January 2003.

The Simbot base was taken by CRASAR to the World Trade Center response, but was not used used there because the control unit and power supply is not readily portable from void to void. However, in a mine rescue, the equipment does not need to be portable since the only access is through a single shaft drilled from the surface. The small size of the robot means trapped miners can be found and cared for remotely more quickly since a small hole can be drilled faster. The hole can then be expanded or moved to create an exit for trapped miners.

SIMTARS borrowed the robot under a cooperative agreement with the University of South Florida and made further modifications to the robot. The robot can now crawl 100 meters down the bore hole into the mine shaft, drop several meters onto the ground below, and navigate up to another 100 meters. Inside the bored hole, the robot acts like a snake, squeezing itself through the rock, but once on the ground, it acts like a miniature tank, climbing over rubble to seek out survivors.

CRASAR expects to add a new suite of medical sensors and software being developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NSF that will enable medical doctors to remotely see, talk with, and diagnose the trapped miners' health. SIMTARS is continuing to experiment with robot and create specifications for a new class of rescue robots.

For more information, photos, and videos contact:

Dr. Robin Murphy
Director, Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue
University of South Florida
murphy@csee.usf.edu
(813) 974-4756