BBC News As New Zealand tries to come to terms with Christchurch's devastating earthquake, rescuers continue to bravely work their way through the rubble in search of more than 200 missing people. From the ground, experts attempt to judge where people are most likely to be buried by scrambling through rubble, listening out for sounds and sending dogs to locate life. Some buildings, however, have proven simply too dangerous for rescue teams to enter. A team of engineers at the University of Warwick has been working to solve this problem by developing a robot capable of entering unstable buildings and "looking" around for any signs of survival. Until now, previous technology has relied on prohibitively expensive laser-based equipment, but Warwick's team have turned to a far more affordable piece of hardware - Microsoft's Xbox Kinect. The motion-detection device means Warwick Mobile Robotics (WMR) have been able to create a robot which can accurately model its surroundings and even identify places in which survivors may be. "The whole idea is to protect the lives of the rescuers," explained Peter Crook, mechanical engineer on the project. "What you'd have is a team of maybe two people - it doesn't take a lot of manpower - and they'd set up outside. From a safe distance they'd drive the robot in and then use that robot to look for victims."
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