The 9/11 terror attacks laid bare the need for better robotic technology to prevent and mitigate disasters, such as robots for search-and-rescue missions. But 20 years later, low market demand and the difficulty of deploying solutions in the field make progress a struggle, says a top Swiss researcher. Marco Hutter, a professor of robotic systems at the Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, spoke to SWI swissinfo.ch about how Switzerland is nevertheless trying to accelerate the development of robots to work alongside humans in emergency situations. What impact did the 9/11 attacks have on search-and-rescue robotics, your area of specialty? I think after 9/11 there was a realisation of how difficult it is to work on search-and-rescue robots, which is probably one of the most difficult and unstructured fields of robotics. Twenty years ago, when there was the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, virtually no robotic solution was ready for use. Today, technology has...
