The collapse of a fully occupied condominium in Florida two years ago.
The major earthquake that shook parts of Syria and Turkey two weeks ago.
No matter how coordinated rescue efforts are at such disaster sites, there’s still lot of chaos involved, as volunteers literally dig through rubble with their hands in the desperate search for survivors.
Two Morgantown high school students want to mechanize such rescue and recovery efforts in the future — and they just got some academic and financial help from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology along the way.
Anna Brusoe, a home-schooled student from Morgantown, and Emily Stanton, who attends University High School, are among seven students from across the U.S. named as finalists in MIT’s “Think Scholars” program — which encourages young people to employ technology for the betterment of society.
Their team proposal is a highly mobile robot that can scale mounds of rubble and fallen walls while offering 3-D imaging of a disaster area.
The rescue robot would also be configured to offer water and masks to victims trapped in the rubble.
Anna and Emily envision pneumatic limbs for greater strength and reach, to go with a modified suction-gripper section, which would enable the robot to traverse everything from caved-in walls to dirt-filled crevices.
Such a rescue device is hardly a design stretch for the duo. Both are active in Mountaineer Area RoboticS, the after-school engineering group known as MARS.
Both have lives outside of their engineering pursuits, also.
Anna is a classically trained pianist and published author. Last year, she wrote and illustrated a book geared to young readers about the accomplishments of female pioneers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
Emily is a competitive swimmer at University High who writes science-fiction and fantasy novels as a hobby. She has also held summer internships at a biomedical company, which is one of her research interests.
Visit Home | MIT THINK Scholars Program for more information.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
