land, sea, and air how unmanned platforms can be ... · disaster robotics land, sea, and air –...

Disaster Robotics Land, Sea, and Air – How unmanned platforms can be

incorporated into disaster response with an example from Fort Bend County OEM

Dr. Robin Murphy Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue Roboticists Without Borders

Lachlan Mullen Fort Bend County OEM

Justin Adams Roboticists Without Borders

Presenter: Robin Murphy • Professor, Texas A&M • Director, Center for Robot-

Assisted Search and Rescue • 25 disasters in 5 countries • founder Roboticists Without

Borders – deploy robots for free – free classes on COAs, UAS

awareness, UAS best practices

Copyright R Murphy 2017 TDEM 2017 2

Presenter: Lach Mullen

• Planner, Fort Bend County

• Emergency Public Information Technology

• Summer Institute Participant

• Licensed FAA sUAS pilot (yep, that’s a thing)

Overview

• What is Disaster Robotics?

• How can UAS benefit you in a disaster operation?

• What are successful strategies for partnering with the public?

• How to plan to use robotics?

• How can jurisdictions tap into using UAS?


WHAT IS DISASTER ROBOTICS?


Disaster Robotics

• Started in 1995 in US and Japan

• Prevention, preparedness, response, recovery

• Historically been focused on using robots to enable expert decisions by publicly-accountable stakeholders



Video

50 Disasters in 18 Countries: Chile, China, Cyprus, Ecuador, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Italy, Japan,

Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Serbia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, USA, Vanuatu

By Type UGVs: 23 UAVs: 27 UMVs: 7



Unmanned Ground Robots • Maxi

• Mini

– Man-portable – Man-packable

• Micro

• Snake

10

Three Types of UMVs

• AUV

• ROV

• USV

Copyright R Murphy 2017 TDEM 2017


Two Types • Fixed Wing

• Rotary-craft • Hybrid VTOL (still experimental)


Small UAS Have Other Variations

Tethered Indoor

HOW CAN UAS BENEFIT YOU IN A DISASTER OPERATION?


Small UAS

• Strategically – Cheaper and faster than satellites or manned assets

– Can produce the same GIS products

– Higher resolution: 4cm-10cm per pixel

• Tactically – Immediate, control what is seen, can be embedded

with boots-on-the-ground


Low

er Co

st

Ab

ility to co

ntro

l viewin

g an

gle

High

er Reso

lutio

n

Imm

ed

iacy

Co

verage

Satellite

Civil Air Patrol

Man-packable SUAS

Man-portable SUAS, manned helicopter



Disasters & UAS • Flooding

• Wilderness, missing person search (with, without water)

• Mass marine casualty

• Hurricane, Earthquake, Other large geospatial extent incidents (wide area search)

• Structural collapse

• Critical infrastructure: transportation, power grid

• Chemical train derailment, hazmat

• Mining and nuclear


Basic Mission Types

• Strategic situation awareness, reconnaissance, survey

• Detailed inspection or structural inspection

• Ground search

• Water search

• Debris, damage, or flood estimation

• Tactical situation awareness

• Delivery


Strategic SA, survey

• 360 view of area (images-> master ortho) – does not have to be

geo-referenced

• Typically will use pre-programmed flights and photogrammetrics


Structural Inspection • Often viewpoint dependent, more

elevation views and than plane views

• Generally 10 feet away from structure

– GPS signal is poor, wind shear

– Some DJI have (large) obstacle avoidance

• Better to have expert on the team in FPV to re-direct as needed

• Check data to make sure it isn’t corrupted


Ground Search

• High resolution images, not video

• Thermal may not be a silver bullet

• Must be geotagged

• Need to know altitude, FOV


Debris, flood estimation

• Consider fixed-wing or manned assets

Cartofusion Situ Map


Tactical Situation Awareness

• What’s the condition of the road ahead?

• Are there any meadows or features we need to move to?

• Any additional hazards or concerns?


Delivery

• Ad hoc delivery is dangerous

Strategicsituationawareness,

reconnaissance,survey

detailedinspectionorstructural

inspection

groundsearch

watersearch

debris,damage,orfloodestimation

Tacticalsituationawareness

delivery

Flooding

Wilderness,missingpersonsearch

Wilderness,missingpersonsearchwithwater

Massmarinecasualty

Hurricane

Earthquake

Otherlargegeospatialextentincidents(wideareasearch)

Structuralcollapse

Criticalinfrastructure:transportation,powergrid

Chemicaltrainderailment,hazmat

Miningandnuclear


Example: Fort Bend Floods


Other Uses...


Strategic CONOPS/ Workflow

• Try to fly and get DSM in advance (quarterly?)

• Fly daily to monitor flood

• Couriers

• Data manager in field and at EOC

– Terabytes of data, cloud computing

– Summary flight slide for each flight

– Backup and maintain chain of custody


Tactical CONOPS/ Workflow

• have a county or agency rep with each UAS team conducting surveys to answer questions from citizens and diffuse any public perception issues

• Have a “mirrored” display so expert can see and direct pilot

• Data manager pro-actively annotate and inform

• Embed small UAS with ESF9, ESF8, and other teams so they can have tactical SA


WHAT ARE SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES FOR PARTNERING WITH THE PUBLIC?



Public Perception: Negative

• 2013 Oso Mudslides: flights were terminated due to (unfounded) concerns over privacy – victims’ families

– flying over personal property

...Fire Department called/talked to residents along boundary

Public Perception: Positive

• 2016 Fort Bend County, Tangiphoa Parish, Washington Parish Floods: citizens enthusiastic about sUAS

– uniforms (don’t look like press)

– agency representative in an agency vehicle in field to answer questions in general

– posted to YouTube and directed questions to


HOW TO PLAN TO USE ROBOTICS?


UAS Costs • Platform costs: $1K -$70K

– But may want to buy them as a set of 3

• Training costs – Manufacturer’s training

• generally will NOT include best practices* – hours needed for skill maintenance, frequency and

content of refresher training is unknown



Justify Based on Capability, Not Reduced Manpower

• Manpower

– 2:1 ratio mandated by FAA

– Will need a data manager

Multi-Use

• Can you share with other agencies?

• What can use them for before an incident- routine inspection, documentation, ...?



How To “Kick The Tires” • Remember, these are as sophisticated as a car or airplane and software is

like cellphone

• Can you both record and take photos? Geotagged? Record the display?

• Can you ship the batteries on an airplane or do they have to go ground? – If not, the batteries may be very specialized, expensive, special storage, and take

up space

• What is the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) or ISO9000? – If they don’t know, they don’t have a manufacturing process

• Is the software open source? From more than one source? – If so, increased odds of interaction errors

HOW CAN JURISDICTIONS TAP INTO USING UAS?


Texas Options

• CRASAR/Roboticists Without Borders

• Mutual Aid, for example AFD RED Team

• Public Partnerships

• Buy some and start a team


Garner Hype Curve for Tech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle


Conclusions: Ignore the Hype!

• UAS are good enough

• Will not get better until you use them more and the best uses emerge

• We’re happy to help

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle


BACKUP


EMILY


Rescue Trackbots


DJI Inspire sUAS


Benefits to using Robots

• Cleaner

• Safer

• More Interesting

• More Precise

• The four D’s of Robotics


Cleaner

• Robots can go where people can’t

• Chiggers don’t bite robots

• Robots don’t get sick and tired of mud


Safer

• Helicopters are filled with meat and when they fall meat gets damaged

• Robots cost money but don’t have next-of-kin

• Robots can go into dark and tight spaces and don’t have to breathe

• Deer ticks don’t give robots lime disease


More Interesting

• The same picture takin with a robot is cooler to look at

• Robots don’t get bored taking the same picture for the 10th time

• Robots don’t make mistakes because they’re so bored they’re daydreaming


More Precise

• Robots can take very careful measurements over time (those 10 “identical” pictures help!)

• Robots can measure 100’s of times per second

• Robots can see things humans can’t see

• Robots hands don’t shake the camera when they see a rattlesnake


How Can Robots Help?

• Example 1 (FBC Flooding? - Lach)

• Example 2 (Austin Rescue? - Robin)

• Example 3 (Damage assessment? - Justin)

• Example 4 (Mitigation/Data capture?)


Example 1 FBC Flooding?

• How we did it

• What we learned

• What we’re doing now

• What we need to get done

• How it should be better next time


Example 2


Example 3


Example 4


Planning to Incorporate Robotics

• Pilot training and licensing for sUAS

• Mission planning

• Air Operations Unit

• Field Communications and Data Processing

• Chain of custody and accountability


land, sea, and air how unmanned platforms can be ... · disaster robotics land, sea, and air –...

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