sikilmahfud

Recently, there are many earthquakes happen. From Sichuan (China), Padang (Indonesia), Haiti, and the most recent was in Conception, Chile. Of course we know that those earthquakes cause many victims, maybe thousands or even hundred thousands.

Nah, ironically most of earthquake victims don't die at the time when earthquake struck, but they die because they are buried alive. Now think about their suffering for a while. Imagine that we are earthquake victim that is trapped below the ruins for three days, while our condition is very weak. We've already send SMS to our friends and family but there's no response. We also wait for rescue team but till now they still don't come. How terrible, buried alive.

Rescue team that seeks for victim surely has limitation. Moreover when several days passed after earthquake, they'll assume that buried victims have already died so they stop seeking. If actually there are still victims alive, what they can do is just waiting for their death.

What if the rescue team is equipped with robot?

Yeah, robot with heat censor and voice recognition! When the robot enters through ruins' space, heat censor and voice recognition are activated. Heat censor is to detect mammal's heat body and voice recognition is to detect whether there's noise, sound inside or not. If necessary, the robot is also embedded with lamp and camera for accurate victim detection.

About shape, the robot can be shaped like snake so they can move with great flexibility. In some countries these robots are already used. The difficulty that we meet when design this robot is, how snake robot can move above uneven terrain and climb between wall ruins. How to make every joint of snake robot become flexible also needs extra effort.

We also can make another shape. If the robot is shaped like bee (we call it drone), we don't need to think about terrain. Just like snake robot, drone also can enter through ruin space easily. Then, we must think about how to adjust drone's altitude so it can fly smartly without hit the wall or floor.

Wow, if these robots become mass-produced and we can deal with the price, we can greatly minimize earthquake victims.