Scope
The SSRR community, the RAS Technical Committee on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics, was established in February 1st, 2002 shortly after the deployment of robots at the 9/11 World Trade Center collapse and subsequent accelerated adoption of robots for homeland security and public safety. The primary outreach activity for the TC is to emergency responders and federal and local government agencies and non-governmental organizations for training and acquisition guidance. This is an ongoing activity with numerous events that include the annual IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics and the related demonstrations.
News and announcements
Activities for disaster response and recovery in Great Eastern Japan Earthquake:
On March 11th in 2011, Great Eastern Japan Earthquake occurred in Tohoku area in Japan, causing extensive damage to Japan due to earthquake itself, but more significantly the tsunami and radioactive contamination by nuclear plant’s disaster that followed the earthquake. As the emergency responders to this disaster,some TC members contributed to the rescue and recovery operationsusing their own robotic systems. This activity includes:
- A monitoring operation in Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant by Crawler type robots (Fig.2) deployed by Satoshi Tadokoro’s research group.
- Inquiry in the sea near the disaster site by Marine Robots deployed by FumitoshiMatsuno and Robin Murphy’s research groups.
- Surveillance in collapsed buildings by UGVs and UAVs.
- Information exchange between international researchers, professionals, media, local governments, governmental organizations, public sectors, private companies, etc. as an international hub.
- Promotion of cooperative actions (response, recovery, research and development, etc.) including NSF RAPID Program as one of the centers.
