World Trade Center Attack Robot Rescue Mission
Abstract (Excerpts from the NY Times story)

"...robots...alongside the emergency workers and rescue dogs, comb...the debris…In one of the first uses of robots in an urban search and rescue operation, about a dozen remote-controlled machines have been employed at the disaster site...they search…in places where human rescuers cannot or dare not go…...The robots are a motley crew...Most...are experimental prototypes...Some…brought out of retirement after the Sept. 11 attacks… Some…were developed...through the Tactical Mobile Robots program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency… said Lt. Col. John Blitch, an Army robotics expert who coordinated the teams. "The Fire Department loved them."... After the two planes hit the World Trade Center, he packed the robots into his car and called other robotics teams…representatives from Foster-Miller and iRobot…drove down...The small MicroTrac crawler and...Micro Unmanned Ground Vehicle...brought by Colonel Blitch, are customized versions ...made by Inuktun...Foster-Miller had two robots...the Solem...and the Talon, which has arms and pincers...The Packbot, manufactured by iRobot, features flippers that allow it to climb stairs and hills...Urbots, which were brought by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, can function upside down... This early deployment of the robots has alerted researchers to features that are needed but not yet developed. For one, temperature sensors are important when penetrating burning rubble. Dr. Murphy said that a robot that was sent into the depths of the rubble lost its rubber treads, probably because they were melted by the fires smoldering under the debris..."