Robotic Gizmo Saves Lives in Emergencies

An advanced mobile wireless communications device will help police, firefighters, and other emergency workers responding to natural or manmade disasters save more lives.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (USA) institute for telecommunications and information technology (Calit2) developed the Gizmo, which looks like a cross between a remote-controlled toy truck and a lunar-landing vehicle, as a device intended for the collecting and transmitting in real time of any information that emergency personnel need via any communications system they are using. The Gizmos create their own wireless network bubble wherever they go; one Gizmo can create a wireless network 200 meters in diameter; several working in conjunction can create an exponentially larger network.

The data collected by Gizmos can be sent back via wireless network connection to virtually anywhere, from a police command station nearby and up to a research laboratory on the other side of the world. Gizmos can be controlled by cell phone, laptop, or a gaming joystick hooked to a computer. The platform on each Gizmo can be mounted with any kind of device--high-definition cameras; super-sensitive microphones; sensors that detect dangerous gases, radiation or high heat levels; or a remote controlled arm that can collect samples. Then, that information can be sent to any communications device, including cell phones, lap tops, Bluetooth devices, or whatever type of wireless transmitter emergency personnel are using. If one communications system fails, emergency personnel can switch to another. Like any wireless Internet system, Gizmo can send information through walls or other obstructions.

"Gizmo will eventually be able to go anywhere on its own and send back in real time whatever information you might need,” said lead investigator Javier Rodriguez Molina, B.Sc., ECE, an electrical engineering graduate student and programmer analyst at the Calit2 circuit labs. "People see Gizmo and immediately think of a new idea for what it can do. I'm sure it has important uses that we haven't even thought of yet.”

Future models of the Gizmo may be alternately much smaller (so they could enter a hostage situation without being detected), or much bigger, such as a full-sized truck, which could penetrate disaster situations even in the harshest conditions, such as a hurricane.


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University of California, San Diego