NSF-JST-NIST Workshop on Rescue Robotics

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports U.S. participation in a U.S.-Japan workshop on rescue robots to be held at Texas A&M University?s Disaster City on March 8-11, 2010. The workshop will be organized in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Response Robot Evaluation Exercise #6 and builds on an August 2008 U.S.-Japan workshop on robotics for safety, security and better quality of life. The award supports travel for six U.S. research teams, with one senior researcher and two student assistants per team, to the workshop. Professor Satoshi Tadokoro of Tohoku University Department of Information Sciences is the lead Japanese collaborator. The TAMU meeting offers U.S. researchers in rescue robots (platforms, sensors, human-robot interactions) an uncommon opportunity to improve their understanding of real-world domains by testing their robots and sensors with NIST standards at the unique facility at Disaster City and obtaining feedback from responders. The workshop is expected to contribute to the theory of rescue robots and establish new collaborations. It fosters U.S.-Japan collaborations through fieldwork, presentations and information interactions. Recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile make the workshop especially timely. The Directorate for Computer and Information Science & Engineering Division of Information and Intelligent Systems cofunded this award.