John G . Blitch

The vast majority of entities living and working in space do so inside pressurized cylinders — including, for all intents and purposes, individual astronauts themselves. The reason for this is simple, and it is as obvious as the submarines patrolling our oceans and the airplanes flying over our heads every single day — pressurized tubes are efficient. As more and more of these cylinders find their way into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond, however, the likelihood of puncture by fast-moving debris of natural or man made origin is increasing — rapidly. Anybody who has ever watched a can of beer or soda drop and spray its frantic would-be consumer with the contents can tell you that rapid response to such calamity is imperative if even a modicum of the precious liquid is to be conserved for later use.The seriousness of this calamity ramps up exponentially of course, when those contents comprise the air one needs to breathe. Imagine for a moment that instead of dropping the can in question on the pavement during  a tailgate party, it had been hit with shrapnel from another can in close proximity that had just exploded into a rapidly expanding cloud of shrapnel - like buck shot headed for a clay pigeon. Imagine further that the only thing you had available to handle this ruptured cylinder of air was a pair of pliers in one hand and a monkey wrench in the other. What do you think your chances would be of sealing off that bottle before the air ran out? When one considers this scenario amidst the collection of rigid robot arms and grippers protruding from the orthogonally arranged cylinders on the International Space Station (ISS) in Figure1, it is clear that, when it comes to emergency response in space, Houston may have a round peg / square hole problem. As any plumber or submarine damage control party will tell you, the sailor’s best friend at sea is often a roll of duct tape or bucket of hose clamps. Shouldn’t a similar repair paradigm follow every manned mission launched into space — especially when they involve precious military assets that now require protection by the newly minted Space Force? We ask you now in the context of this document’s title — wouldn’t it be great if that duct tape could wrap itself around all those leaking pipes? With that in mind, we propose to revive previous research into the use of soft robotic wrapping manipulators to help others save themselves rather than depending on higher headquarters to come to the rescue.

Few disasters can inspire more compassion for victims and families than those involving structural collapse. Video clips of children's bodies pulled from earthquake stricken cities and bombing sties tend to invoke tremendous grief and sorrow because of the totally unpredictable ...

A common aspect of any security projection for the 21st Century is the need to function effectively in complex environments. Cluttered terrain, dense urban areas, and sub-terranean structures all present a daunting set of operational challenges for tactical units within both DoD and a host of other government agencies. The dynamic nature of urban activity and the prominence of human discord in such areas also creates a very complex and often frustrating mix of physical, emotional and psychological constraints that can prevent accomplishment of even the most simple tasks and mission sets. This paper provides an overview of DARPA’s Tactical Mobile Robotics program, and its effort to develop new technologies that will address some of the most difficult and technically challenging aspects of tactical operations in complex terrain. It stops short of an exclusive focus on urban operations in order to fully exploit the potential for semi-autonomous robotic platforms to revolutionize operations across the entire spectrum of tactical activity. This paper outlines the advantages enjoyed through the employment of Man Portable Robotic Systems (MPRS) in denied areas, and calls for a redirection of unmanned systems development toward them. A review of ground robotic platforms is provided first, followed by a discussion of operational voids and corresponding technical challenges. A very brief outline of TMR program structure is presented next in an effort to provide incremental updates on progress sought and made. The paper concludes with a call for continued support of the MRPS concept and innovative research to assist the TMR program in addressing its many technical challenges.

Today’s regional military conflicts are increasingly likely to occur in populated urban areas, in, around, over, and under unknown buildings. This places land forces in dangerous and unpredictable situations, and in many instances the conflicts also threaten noncombatants. To address this need, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Tactical Mobile Robotics program is researching and developing the capability to perform urban reconnaissance with teams of small, low-cost, semiautonomous mobile robots. Easily transportable by individuals, these robot teams will be capable of working together to perform a variety of reconnaissance functions. The program develops enabling technologies (machine perception, autonomous operation, and robotic locomotion) and integrates them into tactical systems for urban operations.

Abstract Structural collapse disasters routinely inspire sympathy not only for victims and their families, but also for heroic rescue personnel who are faced with a tremendously complex, hazardous and often frustrating task environment. Military operations and rescue activities in the aftermath of recent earthquakes and bombings indicate a tremendous need for greater access to denied areas within any crisis site involving collapsed structures. Recent developments in the remote inspection industry show great potential for employment of small robotic micro-rover systems in expanded roles for Urban Search and Rescue. This paper discusses key issues in the application of robotic systems to Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) activities and discusses ongoing development of a knowledge-based system for efficient management of automated search assets. USAR modeling and “micro-bot” employment advantages are addressed first, followed by a discussion of numerical method shortcomings in the context of search asset allocation. KNOBSAR is then proposed as an initial expert system prototype designed to interact with various structural collapse simulation packages and provide advice on search asset allocation to specific entry points within a crisis site. KNOBSAR structure and design is then illustrated in terms of micro-bot allocation scenarios to various collapsed structure entry points. The conclusion drawn from literature review, experimentation and personal experience is that AI technologies in the form of robotic platforms and decision support tools can have a tremendous impact on overall search efficiency for the USAR community, and represent an important field of study for related military applications.

Although automation has become the focus of an increasingly expansive body of research literature in human machine team development, few studies have examined the distinction between confidence in a teammate’s capabilities and trust in their intentions. Fewer still have examined the relationship between these two important components of reliance under naturalistic conditions of high risk. We launch into this void with an initial examination of historical case studies which suggest that risk can act as a catalyst that surprisingly and profoundly transforms the relationship between confidence and trust from a typically convergent and positive influence on teammate reliance to a divergent one that can substantially diminish it. We further examine these historical events as rare yet profound occurrences which take place outside the university/hospital laboratory environment in which the vast majority of scientific conclusions are drawn from the behavior of young college students with im...

Adaptive mobility for rescue robots. [Proceedings of SPIE 5071, 315 (2003)]. John G. Blitch. Abstract. It has often been observed that the most daunting aspect of any crisis response is managing the "unknown unknowns" that inevitably ...

Teams of heterogeneous mobile robots are a key aspect of future unmanned system for operations in complex and dynamic urban environments, such as that envisioned by DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robotics program. One examples of an interaction among such team members is the ...

... 2.2 Capability Voids for Conventional MOW The complex and highly dynamic nature of urban operations prompted the TMR CDG to examine conventional MOUT in terms of a mission scenario which illustrates many of the key capability voids currently realized by today's armed ...

Previous research has supported the use of individual ability measures to predict learning efficiency and training effectiveness for a variety of task domains. This study sought to compare the predictive value of a traditional spatial ability survey used to forecast performance in a robot assisted response task conducted during a simulated Mars habitat emergency, with a relatively new measure of spatial orientation administered during autonomy assisted simulator training of novice Predator drone operators. Results suggest that while the injection of automation into training may not necessarily increase learning capacity, operator candidate pre-selection based on spatial orientation can present a substantial advantage in training efficiency while simultaneously minimizing cost in the form of assessment duration.

ABSTRACT The impact of the use of automation during training was investigated using an Unmanned Aerial System simulator. Participants were trained in a series of basic maneuvers, with half receiving automated support for some controls on a subset of maneuvers. A subsequent novel landing test showed poorer performance for the group that received assistance from automation during training. Implications of these findings are discussed.

■ The RoboCup Rescue Physical Agent League Com-petition was held in the summer of 2001 in con-junction with the AAAI Mobile Robot Competi-tion Urban Search and Rescue event, eerily preceding the September 11 World Trade Center (WTC) disaster. Four teams responded ...

A common aspect of any security projection for the 21 st Century is the need to function effectively in complex environments. Cluttered terrain, dense urban areas, and sub-terranean structures all present a daunting set of operational challenges for tactical units within both DoD and ...

It has often been observed that the most daunting aspect of any crisis response is managing the "unknown unknowns" that inevitably plague incident commanders and emergency personnel at all levels responsible for life and death decisions on a minute by minute basis. In structural collapse situations, for example, rescue crews rarely have even a coarse picture of the number or disposition of people or material scattered amongst the twisted beams and piles of concrete that typically entomb would-be survivors. How can the incident commander decide which beam to lift or even which section of the building to search first in the absence of information of what lies beneath. Even the slightest tug on a concrete slab can collapse potential life harboring void spaces below killing potential survivors in the process. In deploying mobile robots to assist in rescue operations we combined the traditional advantages of machine immunity to fatigue, hazardous materials and environmental controls, with the mechanical design freedom that allowed small platforms to penetrate deep into rubble to expand both situational awareness and operational influence of rescue services at the World Trade Center and mountainous snow-bound caves in Afghanistan. We learned a great deal from these experiences with regard to robot emloyment and design. This paper endeavors to share a few of our more prominent lessons learned regarding portable robot mobility as a means to manage user expectations and stimulate more innovative and adaptive design.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been looking to biology to provide insights into how organisms efficiently navigate in their environment. Specifically, we have sought to understand how organisms, from mammals to insects, can perform rapid locomotion over rough, uneven terrain. These biomimetic principles have been applied to various robotic platforms and the development continues as engineers and roboticists strive to emulate the behavior of natural systems. The following attempts to briefly capture the technology progression to current funded efforts, with a vision towards future robotic interests.