Disaster relief this year’s theme at University of Maryland | The Diamondback

Because of the prevalence of environmental and man-made disasters from Ebola, earthquakes, oil spills and Wednesday’s tornado warning, the engineering college [at the University of Maryland] decided to make disaster resilience this year’s theme, said Darryll Pines, dean of the college and an aerospace engineering professor.

In such situations, humans can help engineer solutions, and robots have the potential to aid response and rebuilding, said SK Gupta, director of the Maryland Robotics Center.

“After a disaster, a lot of places become inaccessible and dangerous for humans to go to,” said Gupta, a mechanical engineering professor. “Robotics [can] play a big role in … situational awareness: what has happened, what the damage is, are there survivors?”

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