Final September, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unleashed groups of robots on simulated mass-casualty scenarios, together with an airplane crash and an evening ambush. The robots’ job was to search out victims and estimate the severity of their accidents, with the purpose of helping human medics get to the individuals who want them essentially the most.
Kimberly Elenberg
Kimberly Elenberg is a principal undertaking scientist with the Auton Lab of Carnegie Mellon College’s Robotics Institute. Earlier than becoming a member of CMU, Elenberg spent 28 years as a military and U.S. Public Well being Service nurse, which included 19 deployments and serving because the principal strategist for incident response on the Pentagon.
The ultimate occasion of the DARPA Triage Challenge will happen in November, and Team Chiron from Carnegie Mellon University will likely be competing, utilizing a squad of quadruped robots and drones. The crew is led by Kimberly Elenberg, whose 28-year profession as a military and U.S. Public Health Service nurse took her from fight surgical groups to incident response technique on the Pentagon.
Why do we’d like robots for triage?
Kimberly Elenberg: We merely shouldn’t have sufficient responders for mass-casualty incidents. The drones and floor robots that we’re creating can provide us the angle that we have to establish the place persons are, assess who’s most in danger, and work out how responders can get to them most effectively.
When may you have got used robots like these?
Elenberg: On the way in which to one of many problem occasions, there was a four-car accident on a again highway. For me by myself, that was a mass casualty occasion. I may hear some folks yelling and see others strolling round, and so I used to be in a position to motive that these folks may breathe and transfer.
Within the fourth automotive, I needed to crawl inside to succeed in a gentleman who was slumped over with an occluded airway. I used to be in a position to raise his head till I may hear him respiratory. I may see that he was hemorrhaging and really feel that he was going into shock as a result of his pores and skin was chilly. A robotic couldn’t have gotten inside the automotive to make these assessments.
This problem includes enabling robots to remotely accumulate this knowledge—can they detect coronary heart charge from modifications in pores and skin shade or hear respiratory from a distance? If I’d had these capabilities, it could have helped me establish the particular person at biggest danger and gotten to them first.
How do you design tech for triage?
Elenberg: The system must be easy. For instance, I can’t have a tool that’s going to power a medic to take their arms away from their affected person. What we got here up with is a vest-mounted Android cellphone that flips down at chest top to show a map that has the GPS location of all the casualties on it and their triage precedence as coloured dots, autonomously populated from the crew of robots.
Are the robots dwelling as much as the hype?
Elenberg: From my time in service, I do know the one technique to perceive true functionality is to construct it, take a look at it, and break it. With this problem, I’m studying by means of end-to-end techniques integration—sensing, communications, autonomy, and discipline testing in actual environments. That is artwork and science coming collectively, and whereas the expertise nonetheless has limitations, the tempo of progress is extraordinary.
What could be a win for you?
Elenberg: I already really feel like we’ve gained. Exhibiting responders precisely the place casualties are and estimating who wants consideration most—that’s an enormous step ahead for catastrophe drugs. The following milestone is recognizing particular damage patterns and the possible life-saving interventions wanted, however that can come.
This text seems within the January 2026 print challenge as “Kimberly Elenberg.”
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