Linux.com Article DB: Linux.com Interview: Mark Micire of the Center for Robotic Assisted Search and Rescue at the University of South Florida.

Intelligence

Linux.com: What kind of intelligence would you attribute to the robots at this time?

Mark Micire: When specifically talking about our USAR goals, they are intelligent in that they assist the rescuer. This is a situation where the robot has to be sufficiently complex enough that it appears simple to the user. That is a tough task given the complexity of the sensing and the unstructured nature of the environment.

Credit for all photo media in this article goes to the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue.

Linux.com: Your web page talks briefly about robot teams and competitions. Like many people I've seen the soccer playing robots on documentaries. These little teams of small robots cooperate with each other and adapt as a group. How is the CESAR team involved in that kind of activity?

Mark Micire: Yes. We competed in the very first rescue competition two years ago at the AAAI conference in Austin Texas. Since then we have found it more beneficial to help organize the competitions. We assisted greatly in the Robocup/AAAI rescue competition this summer in Seattle and will be actively helping to organize future competitions.

Linux.com: Any major things your team learned, or are learning from this experience, about the use of the robots?

Mark Micire: We learned many many things. Enough that two of us have shifted our thesis over to just concepts learned at the WTC. (That's a lot of learning.)

Some of the ones directly related to the robots include ruggedization, heat tolerance, and deploy ability. We successfully managed to break just about every robot that we used. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though, because it showed us the weak points that we would have otherwise missed. The heat at the site was something we hadn't anticipated. Future robots will need to be extremely tolerant to heat above 200 degrees. When we left 11 days after the disaster, the core was still at over 1100 degrees. The general consensus around here is that we will need to be able to operate the robots in our home ovens at the very least. Finally, the ability to have the entire robot package be transportable and deployable by one person very quickly became very obvious. By the time we left, I was carrying a 80 pound pack with batteries, robot, cable, and control unit and could do a deployment in about 1 to 2 minutes. That number needs to be more around 40 pounds and a deployment of 30 seconds. It basically comes down to a wearable computing nightmare.

Linux.com: Your work is clearly important for everybody in the world. Who is funding your research?

Mark Micire: DARPA, ONR, NSF, and SAIC right now. Since Sept 11th we should be getting funding from more USAR related groups. This will be nice since until now it has been rare that one of those groups funded us specifically for USAR research. Normally we would have "work" research in other areas and would kind of slip the USAR research into our own time.

Originally Published: Monday, 15 October 2001	Author: S.A. Hayes, Linux.com
Published to: develop_articles/Development Articles	Page: 4/6 - [Printable]
Linux.com Interview: Mark Micire of the Center for Robotic Assisted Search and Rescue at the University of South Florida. Mark Micire helps build and deploy the robots used to speed the search for survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center. The CRASAR Lab that create these remarkable robots use Linux for most of their computing needs. Linux, and the geeks, researchers and professors who use it are speeding the development of critical technologies like USAR Robotics, technologies that help save lives. Linux.com got in touch with this lab in South Florida to get a closer look at who they are, what they do, and what they do it with.

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Intelligence Linux.com: What kind of intelligence would you attribute to the robots at this time? Mark Micire: When specifically talking about our USAR goals, they are intelligent in that they assist the rescuer. This is a situation where the robot has to be sufficiently complex enough that it appears simple to the user. That is a tough task given the complexity of the sensing and the unstructured nature of the environment. Credit for all photo media in this article goes to the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue. Linux.com: Your web page talks briefly about robot teams and competitions. Like many people I've seen the soccer playing robots on documentaries. These little teams of small robots cooperate with each other and adapt as a group. How is the CESAR team involved in that kind of activity? Mark Micire: Yes. We competed in the very first rescue competition two years ago at the AAAI conference in Austin Texas. Since then we have found it more beneficial to help organize the competitions. We assisted greatly in the Robocup/AAAI rescue competition this summer in Seattle and will be actively helping to organize future competitions. Linux.com: Any major things your team learned, or are learning from this experience, about the use of the robots? Mark Micire: We learned many many things. Enough that two of us have shifted our thesis over to just concepts learned at the WTC. (That's a lot of learning.) Some of the ones directly related to the robots include ruggedization, heat tolerance, and deploy ability. We successfully managed to break just about every robot that we used. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though, because it showed us the weak points that we would have otherwise missed. The heat at the site was something we hadn't anticipated. Future robots will need to be extremely tolerant to heat above 200 degrees. When we left 11 days after the disaster, the core was still at over 1100 degrees. The general consensus around here is that we will need to be able to operate the robots in our home ovens at the very least. Finally, the ability to have the entire robot package be transportable and deployable by one person very quickly became very obvious. By the time we left, I was carrying a 80 pound pack with batteries, robot, cable, and control unit and could do a deployment in about 1 to 2 minutes. That number needs to be more around 40 pounds and a deployment of 30 seconds. It basically comes down to a wearable computing nightmare. Linux.com: Your work is clearly important for everybody in the world. Who is funding your research? Mark Micire: DARPA, ONR, NSF, and SAIC right now. Since Sept 11th we should be getting funding from more USAR related groups. This will be nice since until now it has been rare that one of those groups funded us specifically for USAR research. Normally we would have "work" research in other areas and would kind of slip the USAR research into our own time.
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