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Vibrotactile displays have been trialled in a variety of cognitively demanding domains, including healthcare. Previous work suggests that vibrotactile displays can be used to inform clinicians of patient status, particularly when the displays are alarm-style alerts in surgical or critical care. The goal of the present study is to evaluate how well a common measure of patient well-being-pulse oximetry-can be communicated via an upper-arm vibrotactile prototype. Pulse oximetry includes two important vital signs: heart rate and oxygen saturation. Two displays were tested in a between-subjects design: (1) the Separated display presented heart rate first, followed by oxygen saturation; and (2) the Integrated display communicated both vital signs simultaneously. Participants identified five ranges of heart rate and three levels of oxygen saturation with very high accuracy (>90%), regardless of display type. Although participants' identification accuracy improved marginally with practice, their initial high level of performance was achieved with minimal training. Findings will inform a broader program of research in which we aim to test whether vibrotactile displays might be useful as a part of multi-modal patient monitoring.

This paper describes Canine Augmentation Technology (CAT) for use in urban search and rescue (USAR). CAT is a WiFi enabled sensor array that is worn by a trained canines deployed in urban disasters. The system includes, but is not limited to, cameras that provide emergency responders with real-time data to remotely monitor, analyze and take action during USAR operations. An analysis is made of the current tools available to USAR workers including rescue robots and canine search teams. From this analysis came the design of CAT-a system that extracts the strengths of each available USAR tool and combines them to compliment each other. Our experiments yield promising results that CAT may provide significant help to rescuers.

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In this paper we discuss the use of accelerometers and Bluetooth to monitor canine pose in the context of common poses observed in Urban Search and Rescue dogs. We discuss the use of the Canine Pose System in a disaster environment, and propose techniques for determining canine pose. In addition we discuss the challenges with this approach in such environments. The paper presents the experimental results obtained from the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue disaster simulation, where experiments were conducted using multiple canines, which show that angles can be derived from acceleration readings. Our experiments show that similar angles were measured for each of the poses, even when measured on multiple USAR canines of varying size. We also found measurable and consistent differences between each of the poses, making them clearly distinguishable from one another, again even when comparing with different USAR canines.

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One of the many challenges in developing ground response robots for Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) is endowing them with mobility that allows traversal of challenging terrain. In a preliminary study we introduced a new approach to the mobility problem that utilizes USAR dogs to deliver robots close to human victims in rubble. The results indicated that some search dogs are able to carry a small robot to a victim. This paper extends the original work-this time employing a more capable snake robot. Snake robots have much better maneuverability within rubble than wheeled or tracked robots. Unfortunately they are very slow-making timely rubble traversal a moot point. The premise of this work is that our hybrid system exhibits the advantages of rapid canine mobility with the flexibility and sensing capability of a snake robot.