BART LAB Rescue Robot in the Real Search and Rescue Mission at Collapsed Building Site in Northern Part of Bangkok

August 11-12, 2014: Around 4PM on August 11, 2014, a BART LAB member was contacted from a member of rescue foundation that a 6-story under-construction condominium building in Pathumthani province, northern part of Bangkok, were collapsed, and a number of workers were still trapped under the collapsed site.

It had become a discussion among BART LAB members in a social media whether we should involve in such a real situation. Finally, we had made a decision to join the search and rescue mission, starting by gathering together the BART LAB members at the LAB around 6.30PM.

A BART LAB member, Mr. Chawaphol, had been sent to the collapsed site to survey the real location and situation. The rest of members were preparing the robot to fit with the situation as much as possible.

Finally, the team left the lab around midnight, and arrived the sited around 2.00AM of August 12, 2014. The collapsed site was a quite a large sized building, which all the concrete floors fall down to pile up as a big sandwich. Therefore, the floor-to-floor height was very low. It is quite difficult for our TeleOp IV rescue robot with 55 cm height to get into between cement sheets.

Around 3.30PM, a group of rescue team came to us, and requested for a try to have our robot to get into an open hole to search a victim which they believed that a survival would be below the far-end. Our team had set up a group of members to operate the mission, leading by Dr. Jackrit Suthakorn, Mr. Sakol Nakdhammaborn (Ph.D. student), Mr. Rachot Phuengsuk (Master student), and Mr. Shen Treratanakulchai (Master student) on the collapsed building. Another group of members were supporting at the side of the site, consisting of Miss Choladawan Moonjaita (faculty), Mr. Peerapat Owatchaiyapong (Ph.D. student), Mr. Jitendra Yadav (former Master student), Mr. Branesh Madhavan (Ph.D. student), and Mr. Karat Thanaboonkong (Master student).

The TeleOp IV robot could finally get into the hole, and could climb down from cement sheet which was the 6th floor to the 5th floor and the 4th floor after several trails. However, the robot could slowly move on the 4th floor toward the far-end not very long due to the narrowed height between floor-to-floor sheets. The TeleOp IV robot was successfully come out from the hole and site with the operation time about 1.5 hours.

The mission had given us a big opportunity to work in a real situation, and work with real rescue personals. We have a very high hope to join any coming training or operation with them in the soon future, moreover, our rescue research group at BART LAB would use the experience to improve our design and development on the next rescue robots for the real applications.