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 seek out victims and estimate the severity of their accidents, with the purpose of helping human medics get to the individuals who want them probably the most.
Kimberly Elenberg
Kimberly Elenberg is a principal challenge 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 probably 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 don’t have sufficient responders for mass-casualty incidents. The drones and floor robots that we’re growing may give us the attitude that we have to determine the place persons are, assess who’s most in danger, and work out how responders can get to them most effectively.
When might you’ve used robots like these?
Elenberg: On the best way to one of many problem occasions, there was a four-car accident on a again highway. For me alone, that was a mass casualty occasion. I might hear some individuals yelling and see others strolling round, and so I used to be in a position to motive that these individuals might breathe and transfer.
Within the fourth automotive, I needed to crawl inside to achieve a gentleman who was slumped over with an occluded airway. I used to be in a position to carry his head till I might hear him respiratory. I might 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 within the automotive to make these assessments.
This problem entails enabling robots to remotely acquire this information—can they detect coronary heart fee from modifications in pores and skin shade or hear respiratory from a distance? If I’d had these capabilities, it could have helped me determine the particular person at best 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 drive a medic to take their fingers away from their affected person. What we got here up with is a vest-mounted Android telephone that flips down at chest peak 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 method to perceive true functionality is to construct it, take a look at it, and break it. With this problem, I’m studying via end-to-end programs integration—sensing, communications, autonomy, and subject 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 can be a win for you?
Elenberg: I already really feel like we’ve received. Exhibiting responders precisely the place casualties are and estimating who wants consideration most—that’s an enormous step ahead for catastrophe medication. The subsequent milestone is recognizing particular harm patterns and the seemingly life-saving interventions wanted, however that may come.
This text seems within the January 2026 print problem as “Kimberly Elenberg.”
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