LOCAL NEWS

BYU students invent 2 robots that could help first responders

Jan 31, 2025, 1:27 PM | Updated: 1:47 pm

PROVO — If you have a heavy job to do, a pair of Brigham Young University students have a high-tech solution. The two students have invented two groundbreaking robots that could someday help save lives.

Pretend you have a patient on a stretcher. While someone is carrying one end, the robot could carry the other. Or, one robot could pick up heavy debris and help with a rescue.

“How can we get humans and robots together to carry objects?” asked Dallin Cordon, a master’s degree student studying mechanical engineering and part of the BYU Robotics and Dynamics Laboratory.

Cordon made a robot for his thesis that can mimic movements while helping to carry large objects. He believes robots in our future are inevitable, and he wants to make them safer to interact with.

“As I hit (this part of the robot), it naturally deforms so that makes it a lot safer to be around,” he said, while demonstrating how safe the robot can be.

Meanwhile, another member of the BYU robotics lab, graduate student Curtis Johnson is doing his doctorate dissertation by creating a robot to act more like humans. His robot uses its whole body instead of just its hands, which was inspired by his young daughter picking up a couch cushion.

“It was just so natural for her to pick up these couch cushions that were bigger than she was and that got me wondering, realizing I’ve never seen a robot do anything like that before,” he said.

While modest in what the robots can accomplish now, Johnson and Cordon’s mechanical engineering professor, Marc Killpack told KSL TV the goal is to build them to handle larger and heavier objects that someday could help first responders in real disasters.

“We could make robots that could get people out of harm’s way — that could multiply people’s efforts to rescue or help people in distress,” he said. “That’s really what we’d like to be able to do.”

While both robots are just prototypes, BYU is hoping it can grab the attention of the robotic world and be a part of innovation in the future.

Related: Looking Out for the Good: BYU engineers develop helpful robot


Contributing: Kennedy Camarena and Mary Culbertson, KSL TV

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BYU students invent 2 robots that could help first responders