Mr. Future

The New York Times writes:

A squadron of rescue robots drove, slithered, flew and crawled their way through a series of grueling tests in Texas A&M’s 52-acre “Disaster City” emergency response training complex this week, in a series of challenges issued by the National Institute of Standards and the Department of Homeland Security.

“One site combined elements of the Mexico City earthquake, the explosion in the World Trade Center garage,
the Oklahoma City bombing and the terror attack on the Pentagon, with crushed vehicles and plastic models of severed body parts strewn around for grisly effect.”

Among those tried and tested were the snake-like Active Scope Camera robot (first time out of Japan!), the tracked camera-eyed Talon robot, the hand-rolled Eye Ball R1 robot, and the meter-wide hovering AirRobot