As part of the SmartAmerica Challenge, electrical engineers from the University of Washington have been working on faster and more efficient ways of disaster response. Therefore, they developed a telerobotics disaster-response technology by combining existing "smart" technologies. The university and eight other organizations teamed up for the SmartAmerica Challenge which aims at motivating developers to work on new technologies that help the public good.

The team, called the Smart Emergency Response System team, combines technologies from different organizations to reach new levels of innovation. The emergency response system includes teleoperated robots like the youBot, a high-tech dispatch system for collecting information from cameras and sensors, drones for damage surveillance and dogs equipped with sensors and GPS tracking.

 

The Smart Emergency Response System team consists of members from the University of Washington, BluHaptics, Boeing Co., MathWorks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, National Instruments, North Carolina State University, University of North Texas and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

 

Watch videos:

The Smart America Challenge and Cyber-Physical Systems

youBot valve turn using BluHaptics software over WIFI and Google Glass with software from WPI

 

read more:

University of Washington website