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Room lights on Room lights off
Figure 6: Camera images from ball placed in dark room

for search, infrared LEDs for illumination, a radio receiver for communication with monitoring
computers and a battery are packed into a sphere impact-resistant outer shell. This ball can provide the
view of its entire circumstance by rotating the cameras using a motor. Just like a brim of a hat, a ring
is attached to the shell for suppressing rolling of the ball; it is effective for distribution of balls inside
rubble. The monitoring computer identifies the balls inside rubble and acquires the sensor information
from them by one-to-one communication.
In the future works, we will pack microphones and speakers into search balls and try further
miniaturization. How to get close to the balls which detect victims inside rubble must be solved.
Experiments on searching inside of realistic rubble using many balls will be an important issue.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was performed as a part of Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Urban
Areas (in cooperation with International Rescue System Institute (IRS) and National Research
Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED)).
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