In early October three Squishy Robotics team members traveled to the Guardian Centers, the 880-acre disaster response training facility in Georgia that was the site of the Unmanned Tactical Application Conference (UTAC) 2021. The week-long, immersive conference/training event was hosted by FLYMOTION and focused on real-time unmanned systems response in disaster and/or emergency operations.
Squishy Robotics sponsored the Subway Terrorist Attack scenario. This scenario demonstrated and trained attendees in how responders can use unmanned aerial and ground-based solutions to respond to underground/tunnel terrorist events.
Held in the Guardian Centers’ 1,700-foot mock subway system (it includes eight cars from Washington D.C.’s Metro system), the subterranean demo—complete with smoke, darkness, and screaming victims—showed how effective our tensegrity robots are in such situations.
Attendees from law enforcement, fire and rescue, and special operations teams from across the United States and the world got to observe and participate in hands-on training and learned how our robots can provide the situational awareness and visual and sensor data needed to discover potential chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNe) dangers without putting first responders in actual physical danger.
Squishy Robotics COO Deniz Dogruer explained that UTAC brought together an extensive collection of technologies from many companies. “The immersive training for defense and public safety responders centered not just on letting attendees see new and innovative unmanned technologies but focused on the best practices for actually integrating such technologies into their response efforts.” This news report video illustrates Dogruer’s statements.
In addition to the subway scenario, the Squishy Robotics team participated in the Tanker Fire/Crash scenario. “UTAC was a very collaborative environment where training experts, public safety agency attendees, and technology providers all worked together, sharing successes and lessons learned with the common goal of integrating unmanned technologies to work to improve first responder safety and response outcomes,” Dogruer said.
Three tensegrity robots at work during the Subway Terrorist Attack scenario
Boston Dynamics’ Spot carries a Squishy Robotics’ 4-gas sensing tensegrity robot during pre-scenario testing.