BLACKWELL: When a natural disasters strikes Robin Murphy and her army of robots they come to the rescue. She is one of the leading pioneers in using robots to help communities during search and rescue operations.</s>ROBIN MURPHY, COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING PROFESSOR, TEXAS A&M: The most important thing to know, if you only know one thing, that disaster robots make the disaster go away faster. Robots can go into these places to get to where there might have been survivors. If I can see what I need to see, I can make good decisions to keep the responders safe. My name is Robin Murphy. I'm a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M and I work with disaster robots. Disaster city is one of the emergency management complexes that Texas A&M has. It's designed to test and to train search and rescue teams on how to conduct search and rescue missions. We have supplied robots for 28 disasters. Earthquakes, hurricane Harvey, we assisted with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. When we go, we bring robots and people that we've tested and practiced with in our training exercises. One of the biggest challenges to doing work in rescue robotics is not the robotics. It's the everything else. You're going to a different world. It's really challenging to be at a disaster. There is a physiological and psychological impact of that. It really takes quite a toll. So you have to be really good at what you're doing. But my job is so incredibly fulfilling. It's about the size and the technology and the way it could be used for societal good. That's a big deal to me.
Disaster Robots For Search And Rescue