got geoint?

Did you ever visit the Epcot Center in the 1980s when it first opened up? Many of their interactive rides showcased what the future would be like in the 2000s. And, yes, it was a George Jetson-like futuristic vision that had us living on other planets and robots were the norm. We would all have an ever helpful robotic maid named Rosie and work at Spacely Sprockets. Well, it’s 2011 and things are pretty much the same as they were in the 1980s with the exception of our addictions to the Internet, iPads and other mobile devices. However researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania and the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory is changing all of this with the creation of tiny robots that can map the inside of a building.

These robots can work by themselves and communicate only with one another. The vehicles can divide up a variety of exploration tasks — and within minutes have transmitted a detailed floor map to humans nearby.

“When first responders — whether it’s a firefighter in downtown Atlanta or a soldier overseas — confront an unfamiliar structure, it’s very stressful and potentially dangerous because they have limited knowledge of what they’re dealing with,” said Henrik Christensen, a team member who is a professor in the Georgia Tech College of Computing and director of the Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center there. “If those first responders could send in robots that would quickly search the structure and send back a map, they’d have a much better sense of what to expect and they’d feel more confident.”

Wow. Perhaps the visionaries behind the Epcot Center were right after all? Though we are still waiting for space cars to be invented. The Beltway traffic is getting to be too much.

Tags: Epcot Center, GEOINT, Georgia Institute of Technology and mapping robots, Henrik Christensen, Henrik Christensen and mapping robots, Jetsons, Mapping, Maps, robot mapping, Robots that Map Buildings