04/23/2023
Meet Bergh! Named after Henry Bergh, who founded the American Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Henry Bergh was a wealthy and influential man in his time, and contributed so much to animal rights.
Bergh is capable of utilizing sensors for search, rescue, inspection and environmental monitoring. The missions and applications for the robot include low occurrence, high consequence events that are extremely dangerous, even for firefighters. Its main application is for hazardous material incidents, and can also assist in collapse scenarios. Like the dogs it is mirrored after, Bergh is designed to fall and get back up again to finish the job.
On Tuesday April 18, 2023 Bergh was put into action for the first time. A collapse of a four-story parking garage presented a very dangerous situation. The incident commander pulled all rescue personnel out of the building. At that time there was no way to be sure that other people were not trapped. Bergh entered the first floor, about 20-25 feet into the building and stopped, so the operator could search using a thermal camera to detect heat signatures. An acoustic device on the board enabled listening. Bergh’s operator also used the cameras to inspect the building’s structural components. Bergh advanced slowly to cover the areas that are within the robots capabilities. All of this information was shared with multiple authorities. Bergh was also sent to the second floor where he performed a similar assessment. After the initial missions, Bergh was put into stand-by mode, while drones were used to fly inside the building to assess areas that the robot could not. Bergh was used several other times to retrieve specific data helpful to the incident. The incident marks the first time in FDNY history that multiple robotic teams with air and ground robots were used in conjunction with firefighters and rescue personnel. The information gathered by Bergh was critical to the FDNY response, and his deployment a success.