Engineering professor Mark Yim and his team of undergraduates of University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics have created and tested the swimming robotic boat prototypes.
The boats have been named after the elements in the periodic table and are each controlled by a tiny Gumstix Linux computer. The robo-boats are designed for large-scale rescue projects. A swarm of these robots are said to be able to rescue people from bodies of water or even build impromptu bridges in the case of a natural disasters. They are meant to be used in multiples to assist in-water emergency situations.
A robotic intervention in rescue procedures will be quite effective due to their programmed nature that lacks human qualities such as fear that does occasionally pose disadvantages.
What's Driving This Trend
- Swarm Robotics for Water Rescue
- The development and testing of robotic boats for mass-scale rescue projects with the potential to improve the efficiency of water rescues.
- Robotic Interventions in Natural Disasters
- The use of robo-boats to build impromptu bridges and rescue people in emergency in-water situations, which provides a potential solution to challenges faced during natural disasters.
- Programmed Robotics for Large-scale Projects
- The ability to control multiple robots using a tiny Gumstix Linux computer for tasks such as water rescue and natural disaster clean-ups has the potential to improve the efficiency and success of these projects.
Who This Affects Most
- Search and Rescue
- The development of autonomous robotics to assist emergency responders in water rescues and other large-scale search and rescue missions can offer an innovative solution to improve response times and increase success rates.
- Emergency Management
- The use of robotics in natural disaster response and recovery efforts can improve the efficiency and safety of search and rescue teams, making it one of the disruptive innovation opportunities within the emergency management field.
- Manufacturing
- Robotics can be programmed to complete large-scale projects, such as building bridges in natural disasters situations, making it an opportunity for the manufacturing industry to invest in this new area of robotics development.
