• Question: What will be the next "big thing" in the field of using small drones ads robots in disaster situations? How important will decentralized communication and controll between the robots be?

    Asked by 356rbte52 to Abbie, Melanie, Paul, Stu, Tom on 9 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Abbie Hutty

      Abbie Hutty answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Oooh, good question! I think using drones to do reconnaissance after disasters is very rapidly going to become the norm as it is so easy and cheap and fast to do. then communicating their data back to either each other or a central hub quickly is essential to how successful they are. They ideally also need to be quite autonomous so that they don’t rely on having as many people who are trained controllers as there are drones to be able to complete the mission.

    • Photo: Stuart Inglis

      Stuart Inglis answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Ah I did a project on swarm robotics when at university and it was really interesting. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the decentralised control, if we can properly crack that then that’s a very powerful tool in a disaster situation.

      A swarm of robots would be able to cover large areas very quickly when trying to find missing/trapped people and if they could all link themselves up and create a “stronger” robot to help remove rubble and the likes when they do find someone that would be amazing…and very similar to ants! It’s funny how much we end up wanting to mimic nature! But that could be the next big thing.

      I also feel that drones (as in the airborne version) are getting a lot of negative press today as some users are being a bit irresponsible with them. However it’s important to keep in mind all the useful and good things that they can be used to do too.

    • Photo: Paul Webb

      Paul Webb answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      I feel for bomb disposal that they could have a massive impact ( Ariel ones ) ask know they have bomb disposal robots already but say the army have a possible ied site send in an airborne drone drop a small package and set off a controlled explosion that nutrilises the threat

      But like Stuart with people using them for silly things, there was a guy caught for watching a foot ball match with his drone hovering over the stadium he got £1000s I fines for that

    • Photo: Melanie Zimmer

      Melanie Zimmer answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      That is a really good question! When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster happened in 2011, it would have been really helpful to have more advanced and small robots to send in there. From 2012-2015 a DARPA Robotics Challenge was held to do exactly more research into that (different videos of the challenge can be found here: http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/broll). There are a lot of different tasks a robot needs to be able do to such as climbing stairs, opening doors or pressing buttons, which can be really difficult to do for one robot.

      To get back to your question: Decentralised communication and control will be really important as at some point you want to send a couple of robots into a hazardous situation and they should be able to complete the given task on their own. Therefore, they have to be equipped with sensors and a way of communicating their location and next steps. Getting the communication right can be a really difficult thing, but I also see some of the sensors not ready yet for small unmanned aerial vehicles such as drones.

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