CONNECTING THE DEFENCE COMMUNITY WITH INSIGHT, INTELLIGENCE & OPPORTUNITIES

Officially Supported By: Defence Contracts International Supply2Defence

Official Media Partners for:

Some $3.5M has been awarded to six university teams by the DoD which will fund research into robotics for disaster relief.

The funding has come as part of a joint research project with the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE) and will see joint teams funded by through sponsored US and Korean performers.

The collaboration is designed to bring together top researchers in the field to develop robotics capabilities which could aid in humanitarian disasters and recovery operations.

Research areas funded include: novel platforms for search and rescue, advanced human-robot interaction for command and control, and advanced robotic perception/recognition for enhanced situational awareness.

The US grant recipients and their anticipated research projects are as follows:

  • Yong Cho, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hybrid site sensing and human-multi-robot team collaboration for disaster relief at nuclear power plants
  • Hae-Won Park, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Agile, Soft, and Adaptable Platform for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief
  • Mark Yim, University of Pennsylvania, Variable Topology Truss for Robotic Humanitarian Missions
  • Martial Hebert, Carnegie Mellon University, Semantic Mapping for Disaster Response
  • Allison Okamura, Stanford University, Human-Centered Design and Control of Vine Robots for Disaster Scenarios
  • Sangbae Kim, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Development of tele-operated quadrupedal robotic platform for disaster response

The US program will be jointly managed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development.
If you would like to join our community and read more articles like this then please click here

disaster DoD humanitarian International Republic of Korea robot robotics US

Post written by: Vicky Maggiani

Vicky has worked in media for over 25 years and has a wealth of experience in editing and creating copy for a variety of sectors.

RELATED ARTICLES

February 20, 2025

Land - New robots lead the way in bomb disposal innovation

Robot dogs that can defuse explosives are set to revolutionise bomb disposal operations and significantly reduce the risk to military

October 8, 2024

Homeland - UK, US and Canada to collaborate on cybersecurity and AI research

The Ministry of Defence, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Canadian Department of National Defence will