When disasters strike, every moment can mean the difference between rescue and tragedy. Finding people trapped by floodwaters or beneath the rubble of an earthquake can be difficult even in broad daylight. In the dark of night, it's twice as tricky. That’s where robot engineers aim to help. Engineer Nitin Sanket works at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. “We all know that when there’s an earthquake or a tsunami, the first thing that goes down is power lines. A lot of times, it’s at night, and you’re not going to wait until the next morning to go and rescue survivors,” Sanket told The Associated Press (AP). “So we started looking at nature. Is there a creature in the world which can actually do this?” The answer to Sanket’s question: bats. Sanket’s team is working on tiny drones. They are equipped with technology inspired by the flying mammals’ echolocation skills. The robots are designed to fly through darkness, storms, and fog. They can even fly underground. Rather than a single drone piloted by a human, the bat-drones work in swarms, Sanket says. They send out pulses of sound. Then they read the waves as they bounce off of debris and other obstacles, not unlike a bat on the hunt for bugs. Sanket's team hopes to use artificial intelligence (AI) to translate various sounds and shapes into data for rescuers. That can pinpoint where a trapped person might be. “Bats are amazing,” Sanket told the AP. “We are nowhere close to what nature has achieved. But the goal is that one day in the future, we will be there and these will be useful for deployment in the wild.” Reflect: Where do you think the best new ideas come from? Photo of bat from Unsplash courtesy of Riizz.
