TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2017 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2017 STUDENT MEDIA | @THEBATTONLINE
Silver Taps Andrew Sutter 1993 — 2016
William Douphrate 1991 — 2017
Tyrel Brown 1998 — 2016
Lauren Brown 1994 — 2016
Matthew Hayes 1996 — 2016
Aimée Rodriguez — THE BATTALION
BATT THE THE
TONIGHT WE HONOR THE FALLEN
when 10:30 p.m. Tuesday where Academic Plaza In honor of Aggies who have died, the Ross Volunteer Firing Squad will march in Academic Plaza and fire three rifle volleys of seven shots. Buglers from the Aggie Band will play a special arrangement of Taps.
COMMUNITY
CRASAR develops technology to aid first responders, lower human intervention risk.
THE THE BATTALION BATTALION || THEBATT.COM THEBATT.COM
Hanna Hausman — THE BATTALION
The 50 Men Who Can Cook fundraiser featured “celebrity chefs.”
Local education fundraiser combines food, philanthropy By Ana Sevilla @AnaVSevilla
AUTOMATED RESCUE A&M lab designs robots able to assist in search and rescue ops By Alex Sein @alexandrsein
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or well over a decade, the A&M Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) has been using stateof-the-art robots to aid rescue workers in search and rescue operations. The lab’s robots were deployed for the first time during the World Trade Center response, and have since assisted in numerous other recovery and restoration operations including hurricane Katrina and the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown. Robin Murphy, head of CRASAR and computer science professor, has assisted in recovery operations for 26 disasters, and
is part of ongoing collaborations between CRASAR and the Greek and Italian coast guards. “Our job is to insert these technologies, to learn from the agencies how to best use them, do more research when we find gaps or problems,” Murphy said. The Italian Coast Guard has used these robots to help refugees from Northern Africa get to Italy safely, according to Murphy. “Some of these boats will hold 800 people, so when something goes wrong, you get significant deaths,” Murphy said. “The lifeguarding resources of the Coast Guard and the other agencies is pretty limited.” On Jan. 28, CRASAR also participated in a training exercise with Brazos Search and Rescue. According to Grant Wilde, a computer science Ph.D. student at the lab, the exercise was designed to familiarize the different organizations there with the tech-
nology as well as test new features on some of CRASAR’s robots. “EMILY, which stands for Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard, that, in combination with a sonar package, were used to see if they could possibly find any discrepancies in the water, or try to get into places where the manned boat could not,” Wilde said. According to Wilde, EMILY can carry various payloads depending on what is needed, and there are different EMILY designs on the market right now. In fact, according to Jan Dufek, another Ph.D. student, the lab has been designing a “smart” EMILY. “One of my teammates basically modified the EMILY to make it able to be autonomous,” Dufek said. “We added autopilot, GPS, telemetry radio, and that way we can control it from a computer. We can also use CRASAR ON PG. 3
For the last 10 years, College Station Independent School District has combined food, fun and philanthropy at the annual 50 Men Who Can Cook fundraiser. On Saturday, businesses, CSISD employees and patrons gathered at the Expo Center to support the CSISD Education Foundation, a non-profit public corporation that awards funds to both students and teachers. The event features “celebrity chefs,” which can be anyone from business owners, to teachers, to administrators and community leaders and media members. The chefs work at booths, usually on a team of two or three, and prepare 800 2-ounce samplers of their dish. Education Foundation executive director Teresa Benden said the event has grown exponentially since its beginning. “It started out as a small gathering, with only 300 people,” Benden said. “We’ve taken it from that to a full-blown event ... This year we have 137 ‘celebrity chefs’ in 68 booths, and over 200 volunteers to actually help work the night of the event.” Benden said the cooks aren’t professionally trained, so cooks aren’t charged an entry fee because their food is their donation. KBTX Meteorologist Max Crawford and his team created Chicken Pepper Bacon snackers with a bacon jam cream cheese sauce to pair. “We’ve been working on it all week,” Crawford said. “It’s been a little bit of a labor of love but it’s good to finally see all this [the food] get doled out...and see the satisfaction on people’s faces.” Southwood Valley Assistant Principal Heather Sherman and her husband represented school CSISD ON PG. 3
Aggie Ability Awareness Workshop kicks off Three-way partnership hopes to educate faculty on various disability services By Meredith McCown @meredithrhoads
PROVIDED
The Aggie Ability Awareness Workshop is a semester-long seres aimed at educating faculty about disability services.
Multiple disability departments at Texas A&M have partnered to create a semester-long workshop series to educate faculty on issues concerning disabilities. A collaboration between the Center of Disability and Development, the Department of Disability Services and the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Aggie Ability Awareness Workshop is an effort to coordinate a universal design learning structure that anyone can benefit from, specifically people with disabilities. Through the workshop, the three departments hope to create a positive environment surrounding equality and acceptance towards specific needs of a variety of students. The workshop will be held three other times this semester, one each month. Additionally, a forthcom-
ing session for students will be available at the end of spring semester. The first open training workshop was held last Thursday in the MSC. According to Meagan Sumbera, associate director for the Center of Disability and Development, the training will encourage an understanding of how disability rights parallel civil rights, as well as basic human rights. “This is for any disability category that’s recognized under the American Disabilities Act,” Sumbera said. “Because a lot of times we are unable to see a disability, for example, ADHD, people with anxiety, dyslexia, those hidden disabilities. This is going to be helpful and beneficial, and be inclusive for all.” Sumbera said the workshop is an attainable way to respond to the need for disability awareness training. “An exciting thing that we’re doing now is we’re adding more courses, so once you’ve completed the Aggie Ability Awareness course, we’ll have a course on universal design — one specifically on accommodations, and then one specifically on person-centered ABILITY ON PG. 2