For most people, snakes seem unpleasant or even threatening. But Howie Choset sees in their delicate movements a way to save lives.

The 37-year-old Carnegie Mellon University professor has spent years developing snakelike robots which he hopes will eventually slither through collapsed buildings in search of victims trapped after natural disasters or other emergencies.

In recent weeks, Choset and some of his students made what he said was an industry breakthrough: enabling the articulated, remote-controlled devices to climb up and around pipes.

Rescue workers say such robots would help them meet their challenge of locating survivors. Current equipment has limited mobility and is usually lowered into fallen structures, Choset said.

"Right now, the way to get to these trapped survivors is to pull the rubble out one rock at a time," Choset said. "So our dream is to have the snake robot thread through this collapsed rubble and get to victims more quickly."

He said it generally takes about 90 minutes for rescue workers to get access to a disaster site, while a robot can immediately delve into rubble. They are also safer because "you don't have people pushing rocks around you," he said.

Dan Kara is president of Robotics Trends, a Northboro, Massachusetts-based company that publishes an online industry magazine and runs robotics trade shows. He said there are other snakelike robots being developed, mainly at universities, but didn't know of one that could climb pipes.

Kara also said the market for rescue-related robots has expanded as high-profile disasters have unfolded in recent years.

The Carnegie Mellon machines are designed to carry cameras and electronic sensors and can be controlled with a joystick. They wriggle with the help of small electric motors, or servos, commonly used by hobbyists in model airplanes.

Built from lightweight aluminum or plastic, the robots are about the size of a human arm or smaller. They are semiautonomous and can sense which way is up, but are only as good as their human operators.

"The rescue workers are the heroes," he said. "These are just better tools."

The robots, with nicknames such as "Breadstick" and "Pepperoni," have successfully inched up the insides and outsides of storm drains, negotiated large gaps between pieces of debris, and manoeuvred through underbrush and fences, Choset said.

At a Carnegie Mellon lab, one of the robots wriggled up and down a clear plastic tube.

Sam Stover, a search team manager with the Federal Emergency Management Agency based in Indiana, said snake-type robots would offer greater mobility than equipment currently available, such as cameras attached to extendable poles.

"It just allows us to do something we've not been able to do before," Stover said. "We needed them yesterday."

He said sniffer dogs are still the best search tool for rescue workers, but they can only be used effectively when workers have access to damaged buildings.

Stover, among the rescue workers who handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, said snake robots would have helped rescuers search flooded houses in that disaster.

Choset said the robots may not be ready for use for another five to 10 years, depending on funding.

Source: China Daily