24 Verticality and tortuosity “You need to know about verticality and tortuosity – how much twistiness there is. You need to know what your relative size is, if you are expecting a large robot to get into a tight space or a small robot to work in a large space. For example, if you’ve got a snake robot that moves by pushing against walls, you don’t want it to be in a big spot, because it’s got nothing to push against.” The main technology gap is in small ground robots, but Murphy is excited about the major advancements being made in “soft” robotics; the snake-like or vine-like machines that can go into small, irregular-shaped spaces. These have been developed mainly for underground infrastructure inspection or medical applications such as endoscopy, where they face the problem of keeping cameras free of “goop”. AI contributions Murphy’s PhD is in AI for robotics, and there are two areas where she believes such smarts will make a big contribution to disaster robotics in future. One of these is the nexus where computer vision meets machine learning, and the other is human-robot complementarity. In the first case, her graduate students created a “huge” database of UAV imagery from disasters, and they are training AI to recognise and categorise building damage using imagery from the aftermath of recent hurricanes. This can amount to 60 GB per day. “One person can’t do that, five people can’t, so you definitely need the AI.” She says human-robot co-operation gets away from the paradigm in which the machine was either fully automated or fully teleoperated when the relationship should be more like a horse and its rider. “Finally, we’re seeing the robotics community go back to this idea of complementarity – human and robot working together in what is also called a joint cognitive system.” In such a system, a snake bot could be trusted to find its way into a debris pile, and its human operator might ask it to stop and back up, or provide a better view. However, Murphy cautions against the common hand-waving assumption that AI will “just learn” what it needs for rescue work. “One of the concerns I have is that my colleagues tend not to be in the field. By not working with domain experts in real conditions it’s easy to assume your way out of a problem or make an AI system that doesn’t really work.” A solution may emerge from AI-related work at the National Science Foundation AI Institute on societal decision-making. “That is part and parcel of helping to educate and encourage our community to get more into fieldwork to understand what it takes to make these decisions,” Murphy adds. February/March 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology In conversation | Robin Murphy Robin Murphy was born in Mobile, Alabama, in the year of Sputnik – 1957. Growing up and going to school in the area immersed her in the technological culture of the space race: “Everybody wanted their kids to know science and math.” The area is also subject to hurricanes. In September 1965, Hurricane Betsy wiped out Round Island in Mobile Bay, a favourite fishing spot for Murphy and her father. “I got an impression of just how devastating hurricanes can be,” she recalls. The family later moved to Georgia, where Murphy attended Georgia Tech and earned a degree in mechanical engineering, followed by a masters and, in 1992, a doctorate in computer science. Murphy’s introduction to robotics came while pursuing her PhD and, under the terms of a fellowship, she had to work on computer-integrated manufacturing systems. She took the chance to work for a new professor on AI for robotics. At first, she says, this “sounded like a bunch of hooey”, but she was undeterred. “I got on with him, and just fell in love with AI and robotics.” Now approaching retirement in the spring, Murphy plans to teach a three-hour class on emergency robotics, summarising the field since 1995. After that, she’s looking forward to continuing her work with CRASAR, but also spending more time hiking, camping and kayaking. “I’m a very outdoors person,” she adds. Professor Robin Murphy UAVs are typically used in rapid needs assessment and in reconnaissance of areas no longer reachable by road after floods, mudslides and earthquakes (Image courtesy of CRASAR)
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