Pittsburgh — At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, researchers are hard at work developing robot "dogs" designed to assist in situations too dangerous for humans to help.
"This is the dog that saves your life," Kimberly Elenberg, a principal project scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, told CBS News.
While Pittsburgh has long been known as the Steel City, it is fast becoming a major tech hub. The Defense Department has invested heavily here in artificial intelligence and robotics, like the kind of research being developed at Carnegie Mellon.
Elenberg demonstrated how the robot dog, named Spotless, could be used in a search and rescue situation.
"It's looking for casualties," Elenberg explained during a demonstration. "It wants to assess the situation."
Like a real dog with a good nose, Spotless can "sniff" the air to ensure it is safe for humans. It can even assess a person's condition, injuries and heart rate.
Elenberg explains that, during the simulation, Spotless helped speed up the search and rescue operation.
"This would have taken longer for the medics to come in, because they wouldn't have known, what is that gas," Elenberg said. "They wouldn't have known, how many casualties are there."
After all that work, Spotless gets a treat. Not a biscuit in this case, but a nice new battery.
Robot "dogs" go places too dangerous for humans
Robot "dogs" sniff out places too dangerous for humans
(01:28)
