Last September Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released robot teams on simulated mass casualty scenariosincluding a plane crash and a night ambush. The robots' task was to find victims and assess the severity of their injuries in order to assistance to doctors reach those who need them most.
Kimberly Elenberg
Kimberly Elenberg is the chief researcher of the project Auton Laboratory Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. Before joining CMU, Elenberg spent 28 years as a nurse in the Army and U.S. Public Health Service, including 19 deployments and a position as chief incident response strategist at the Pentagon.
Final event DARPA Triage Challenge will take place in November and Team Chiron from Carnegie Mellon University will compete using a team from four-legged robots And drones. The team is led by Kimberly Elenbergwhose 28-year career in the military and US Public Health Service nurse took her from combat surgical teams to the Pentagon's incident response strategy.
Why do we need robots for sorting?
Kimberly Elenberg: We simply don't have enough response capacity to respond to mass casualty incidents. The drones and ground robots we are developing can give us the perspective we need to determine where people are, assess who is most at risk, and figure out how responders can reach them most effectively.
When could you use such robots?
Elenberg: On the way to one of the competitions, an accident involving four cars occurred on a country road. For me personally, it was a mass casualty event. I could hear some people screaming and see others walking around, and so I could assume that these people could breathe and move.
In the fourth car, I had to crawl inside to get to a gentleman who had fallen to the ground due to a blocked airway. I could lift his head until I heard him breathing. I saw that he was bleeding and felt that he was going into shock because his skin was cold. It would be impossible for a robot to break into a machine to make such an assessment.
The challenge is to allow robots to collect this data remotely: could they detect heart rate from changes in skin color or hear breathing from a distance? If I had these abilities, it would help me identify the person at greatest risk and get to him first.
How do you develop technologies for sorting?
Elenberg: The system should be simple. For example, I cannot have a device that will force a physician to take his hands off the patient. We came up with a vest that can be attached to a vest Android phone that lowers to chest level to display a map with GPS the location of all the wounded on it and the priority of their sorting in the form of colored dots, autonomously filled in by a team of robots.
Will robots live up to the hype?
Elenberg: I have learned from my service that the only way to understand true capabilities is to create them, test them, and destroy them. In tackling this challenge, I learn through end-to-end systems integration—sensing, communications, autonomy, and real-world field testing. It is a combination of art and science, and although the technology still has limitations, the rate of progress is extraordinary.
What would be a win for you?
Elenberg: I already feel that we have won. Showing responders exactly where victims are and assessing who is most in need of attention is a huge step forward for disaster medicine. The next milestone is the recognition of specific injury patterns and the likely life-saving measures needed, but that will come.
This article will appear in the January 2026 print issue under the title “Kimberly Elenberg.”
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