Micro 'cockroach' drones help find earthquake survivors in Venezuela

A week after devastating twin earthquakes struck Venezuela rescue teams are using drones, dogs, cameras and specialised listening equipment to search for survivors.

Applause and cheers erupted in La Guaira earlier this week when a toddler was rescued after spending six days under rubble.

Such moments are becoming rarer, but John Morrison from US Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue says emergency workers are "hopeful there's still time".

"We are going to work as long as it is possible to save anybody that's still trapped in some of these buildings," he told ABC Radio National's AM program from La Guaira.

Dozens of international rescue teams are working alongside locals to try and locate tens of thousands of people still missing.

Many brought fleets of specialised rescue drones, which experts say have become crucial in disaster response to access dangerous areas.

The UN's humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher specified that micro drones, which he nicknamed "cockroach drones", were helping teams "find people in the buildings".

With the ability to fly into cracks inaccessible to humans, the drones have the potential to locate survivors in the rubble.

Surviving under rubble

The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude shocks killed more than 2,200 people in what is one of the worst earthquake disasters in Latin American history.

Rescue teams are operating in a dense urban environment surrounded by the carnage of hundreds of destroyed or damaged buildings.

Mr Morrison said most of the buildings were high-rise residential apartment blocks made from reinforced concrete.

He said that when they collapsed they created "very large void spaces within them that have potential for survivors".

"So it's really about talking to the locals and finding out when people have last heard any noise from within the structure,  then really listening with specialised listening equipment … along with our technical search for cameras," Mr Morrison said.

"Then running our canine search, the dogs running the piles trying to find those last victims."

After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan a teenager and his 80-year-old grandmother were found alive after nine days trapped in their flattened home.

The year before, a 16-year-old Haitian girl was rescued from earthquake rubble in Port-au-Prince after 15 days.

Micro drones to the rescue

University of Technology Sydney School of Computer Science associate professor Nabin Sharma said the use of small drones to locate natural disaster victims was becoming more common.

Operated by skilled pilots, the drones could be flown into rooms, stairwells and underground spaces.

"With a really small micro drone, you can control and manoeuvre it through a small space, like a small hole, and get inside," Dr Sharma told the ABC.

"It is definitely an advantage to have smaller drones because they can go to places where it is very difficult for even robots to go."

Topos Azteca, one of Mexico's best-known civilian search-and-rescue organisations, posted videos to social media showing its rescue drones in action in Venezuela.

One video shows a drone's night-vision camera feed as it flies into a damaged building looking for signs of life.

The group said technology did not "replace the rescuer" but the drones were allowing them to "obtain critical information" while keeping their team members safe.

Micro drones vary in size, but many used for search scenarios are about 20 centimetres long, often with a compact quad-copter design.

Dr Sharma said micro drones were equipped with a range of advanced sensor technologies and thermal cameras that could detect heat signatures emitted by human bodies.

"You can get a lot of information very quickly," he said.

Technology to filter out drone propeller noise was also being developed in order to locate faint human voices or cries for help coming from under collapsed buildings.

Small rescue drones were used to help find survivors after Türkiye's devastating 2023 earthquake and also delivered supplies to people trapped in the rubble.

Cyborg cockroaches next?

It was unclear which micro drone Mr Fletcher was referring to as the "cockroach drone".

Dr Sharma said the nickname could be associated with the agile nature of micro drones in general and "how easy it is to manoeuvrer the drone in really small, confined rubble spaces".

He said it was unlikely Mr Fletcher was referring to the use of actual cockroaches, though experimenting with live so-called cyborg insects for disaster response was a field researchers were exploring.

In March last year, cyborg insects were used for the first time in a humanitarian operation in response to a devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar.

The cyborg cockroaches were developed by Singapore's Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) together with Nanyang Technological University and Klass Engineering and Solutions.

Controlled with microchips strapped to their backs, 10 cockroaches were used to help rescue teams search for survivors in some of the worst-hit areas.

They were not reported to have found any survivors, but researchers from Nanyang Technological University said the insects provided access to areas "conventional robots would have struggled with" in shorter times.

The team was now working towards scaling up mass production of the insects for future deployment.

Thang Vo-Doan, a lecturer at the University of Queensland's School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, has also been creating "cyborg" insects for disaster response.

He said devices attached to the cockroaches sent signals to the insects' nervous systems, allowing them to be controlled.

Operators could make them move in different directions or go faster or slower, so there was the potential to guide the insects through search-and-rescue settings.

"We can have a camera that sends a video stream to back to the controller or the operator," Mr Vo-Doan told the ABC.

"Sometimes we have environmental sensors, like temperature humidity sensors."

He said the data could also enable rescue teams to detect if a human body was at a temperature that indicated if the victim was alive.

Some of the technology was still under development, but Mr Vo-Doan was hopeful the cyborg insects could be ready for "a real disaster scenario" early next year.