LUKE SKYWALKER鈥橲 鈥渄ustbin on wheels鈥� may be coming to a highway near you. The
R2D2 lookalike is designed to be first on the scene after a traffic accident,
where its video camera and mini TV screen would allow stranded or injured people
to talk to emergency personnel while waiting for human help to arrive.
The all-terrain wheeled rescue robot is part of a comprehensive 鈥渞oadside
response system鈥� being developed by Mohan Trivedi and his team at the University
of California, San Diego. Busy freeways in the US already have dedicated
response teams, which clear smashed cars and other wreckage from accidents
before they cause major snarl-ups.
Trivedi says his robots would speed things up by alerting the emergency
services earlier. 鈥淚f we can get emergency services to the scene just five
minutes sooner, that translates to 49 lives saved per year on America鈥檚
freeways,鈥� he calculates.
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Pole-mounted cameras would monitor the road, sending video images to a
roadside computer that scans them for crashes or signs of trouble such as a
vehicle pulling onto the hard shoulder. When the system detects an incident, it
attempts to work out what has happened鈥攂y assessing whether the people
involved are waving their hands for help, for example, or kneeling to change a
tyre. The system then alerts emergency services and deploys the droid, which
trundles out of a roadside cabinet to investigate.
At 1.2 metres tall, Trivedi鈥檚 robot鈥攃alled Robotar鈥攎ight sound a
handy target for drive-by vandalism, but its incriminating built-in cameras may
be a deterrent. These connect via a wireless link to the highway control centre.
Robotar鈥檚 on-board computer enables it to navigate around obstacles as it
travels to its destination. To save power, Trivedi is considering dumber
robots鈥攐nes that don鈥檛 carry such sophisticated computers, but download
instructions from a distributed computer network that gets its information from
the roadside cameras.
Each roadside pole will sport two digital video cameras. The first will point
at a convex mirror that creates an all-round, 360-degree view. Software
developed by a member of Trivedi鈥檚 group, Kohsia Huang, transforms the image
into a flat panorama, which allows an operator to pan around the entire image
electronically while the camera remains fixed.
The second camera is designed to handle detailed work. It can pan, tilt and
zoom, and has high enough resolution to read a car鈥檚 licence plates. Trivedi鈥檚
student Brett Hall wrote software that seamlessly overlays the pan-tilt image
onto the relevant portion of the image from the first camera, so that the user
effortlessly switches between the two.
Traffic cops are impressed. Alex Jones, second in command at the California
Highway Patrol, told 快猫短视频 that the scheme could offer huge
advantages. 鈥淐learly there are limits to what you can do based on what you see
on a camera, but the system would certainly give us a leg up in trying to
ascertain the severity of the accident and making sure the right equipment and
personnel are sent out.鈥�