20 Professor Robin Murphy is an expert in using robots to save lives and rebuild communities following a disaster. She wrote a book on the subject, Disaster Robotics, which has become a key reference work. She is also the Raytheon professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University, and vice-president of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue. Two major disasters pivotal to the use of robots for search and rescue took place in the US and Japan in 1995, which shaped Murphy’s career: the Oklahoma City bombing and the Kobe earthquake. The respective responses of Murphy and professor Satoshi Tadokoro of Kobe University led to their being credited with founding the field of disaster robotics. At the same time, NASA was making final preparations for the Mars Pathfinder mission, during which a 10.6 kg, wheeled robotic rover, Sojourner, would deploy from the Carl Sagan lander. “Everybody was looking at small robots for extreme environments and realising this technology was needed immediately on Earth. And, in 1996, I got the first AI robotics expert Robin Murphy talks to Peter Donaldson about search and rescue in extreme conditions Rescue bots February/March 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Professor Robin Murphy with a selection of the UAVs, UGVs and USVs deployed by her team to help with rescue and recovery in disasters (Image courtesy of Texas A&M University)
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