Most people have heard the old pessimistic adage: “disaster seems to follow me wherever I go.”
Well, in the case of Dr. Alex Ramirez-Serrano, the leader of the 4Front Robotics and University of Calgary GoAERO team, it may be more than just a saying. Indeed, the full-time University of Calgary professor has lived, attended school, and worked in seven different cities around the world, including Chicago, Mexico City, Stockholm, the California coast, and Toronto, some of which ate situated in regions that are prone to earthquakes, forest fires, and tornados, among other natural disasters.
As a result, he explains, “I have experienced disaster firsthand, such as the devastation that took place during the 1985 violent earthquake in Mexico City that had a magnitude of 8.0 in the Richter Scale. It caused buildings to collapse, leading to over 5,000 people dying.”
He stresses that many of the deaths there, as well as in other extreme natural disaster events, were due to the limited number of available First Responders who could be deployed at one time and be immediately on location. That often leads to a perception that the response was inefficient and “in numerous cases assistance from foreign aid (when needed) is also perceived as slow.” But, if assistance was readily available, the number of victims that could have been rescued would greatly increase.
So, just as legendary American financier John D. Rockefeller once explained about his success – “I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity” – Alex notes that, “my life experiences and my engineering interest in aviation and robotics led me to start developing advanced autonomous robotic systems -- aerial and legged – that can be provided to First Responder teams to assist in urban search and rescue.”
Alex explains that it is the very complexity of disasters that requires such innovative approaches to emergency response, approaches that can completely revolutionize the industry through greater efficiency and effectiveness. “This is very evident to me based on the fact that urban search and rescue teams must be totally self-sufficient for the first 72 hours of a deployment. They must carry with them all the required equipment to conduct physical search-and-rescue in collapsed structures, provide emergency medical care to trapped victims, find survivors of the collapse using search and rescue dogs or electronic and robotic equipment, assess and control utilities and hazardous materials, and evaluate and stabilize damaged structures.”
To help reduce the amount of equipment that First Response teams need to carry, he soon became interested in applying his knowledge in aviation and robotics towards the development of advanced aircraft and autonomous robotic tools for emergency response, whether in hazardous environmental conditions or confined spaces.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Alex, who has served as director of the manufacturing program and of the graduate program within the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at University of Calgary, is also the founder and director of the Robotarium Robotics research laboratory where he performs R&D activities in aerial and multi-legged robotic systems.
And it also comes as no surprise that he’d be drawn to the GoAERO competition. In fact, he and his 12-person team had already been working to develop the emergency response flyers that GoAERO is now spurring: highly maneuverable drones and multi-legged systems for deployment in hazardous spaces, such as those encountered inside collapsed buildings, beneath tree cover, mines, and inside hazardous industrial environments. He explains that this work includes developing swarm robotics for highly maneuverable aerial systems capable of performing maneuvers that no aerial – manned or unmanned -- can execute, such as pitch hover maneuvers at any desired angle including inverted flight. He also envisions his aircraft being able to land and take off from sloped surfaces, i.e. mountainous terrains, move through rough waters, and “position its sensors systems strategically at any position and orientation using a myriad of tools including mathematical formulations and artificial intelligence techniques.”
Speaking of AI, Alex is all in favor of it. “I’m not afraid of the tools. I’m afraid of what the tools could be used for. That’s my biggest fear. But so long as the tools are used to benefit society, I’m all for AI.”
He notes that he sees an essential role for AI as he and his team designs and builds his GoAERO device. His team’s three goals are to develop an emergency response flyer that can perform tasks at “the highest speeds….at least 1.5 times faster than a human can do. It also needs to be able to maneuver in confined spaces, to be able to penetrate a space that no other aircraft can achieve. And it needs to have full autonomy, to analyze the situation, decide on how to proceed on the fly, and successfully complete the mission.”
For Alex, therefore, the GoAERO Prize is essential for the opportunities it will provide to First Responders. In fact, he is particularly excited that the competition will greatly expand the Emergency Response arsenal, enabling rescue missions to reach places that have been often inaccessible to humans, including collapsed and burning buildings, collapsed trenches, mines, and other isolated places.
Moreover, Alex is excited by the partnerships that can be created between local fire departments, law enforcement agencies, medical services, federal and local governmental agencies, and private companies. “GoAERO provides the opportunity to work with First Response task forces consisting of many skilled individuals, each with a varying set of abilities, to work together,” he exclaims.
Sure, there are challenges, from securing the necessary financial resources to addressing variables resulting from weather conditions. So, he says, “we are developing aircraft systems having greater propulsion and reduced thrust to power ration so that the developed aircraft can fly longer and carry more payloads, while still being maneuverable for the needed missions.”
Alex – whose favorite movie is “The battle of the X-planes: Boeing X-32 vs Lockheed X-35” – is confident that his team’s GoAERO flyer, and the others that will be developed through the competition, will have long-term economic and human benefits. Some communities that have been devastated by disasters take 20 to 30 years to recover and rebuild an entirely new infrastructure. But, Alex says, “we also have to consider the human aspect. He uses the World Trade Center terrorist attacks as an example. There, it’s taken two decades for diseases like cancer to manifest in the First Responders. So GoAERO will offer a “cascade of benefits…it’s a win-win for everyone.”
