Dr. Rodney Brooks

iRobot Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Professor Rodney A. Brooks
Rodney Brooks is the principal architect of iRobot’s innovative proprietary software technology. He is also the Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT and the Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. His principal fields of interest are robotics, computer vision, and artificial intelligence. Dr Brooks is a noted authority on Artificial Intelligence and is frequently profiled and quoted in articles and news stories in venues such as Good Morning America, Scientific American, Nightline and many Discover and Learning Channel shows. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Rodney Brooks – Roboticist (MIT CSAIL/EECS)
Rodney Brooks is Panasonic Professor of Robotics in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corp (NASDAQ: IRBT). From 1997 – 2003 and from 2003 – 2007, respectively, he was Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. His research is concerned with both the engineering of intelligent robots to operate in unstructured environments, and with understanding human intelligence through building humanoid robots. He has published papers and books in model-based computer vision, path planning, uncertainty analysis, robot assembly, active vision, autonomous robots, micro-robots, micro-actuators, planetary exploration, representation, artificial life, humanoid robots, and compiler design.

Ronald C. Arkin, “Governing Lethal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture,” Technical Report GIT-GVU-07011. Fascinating (and long: 117-page) paper on ethical implications of robots in war.

[From Bruce Schneier's blog]

Readers may also be interested in a more recent publication from Georgia Tech, “Lethality and Autonomous Systems: Survey Design and Results” (PDF format), a survey of the general public, military, roboticists, and policy makers on ethical issues of autonomous military robots.

[From Robots.net]

The Economist

SHINTOISM is an animist religion. Its adherents believe that all things, from lampshades to leopards, can possess living spirits. This fact is often trotted out to explain Japan’s fascination with robots. And where America’s mechanical beings tend to menace the human race (think HAL and Terminator), Japan’s are more often its saviours (as Astro Boy has been, since 1951).

General Motors introduced the first industrial robots in 1961. Since then, Japan’s largest companies have competed to make robots as human as possible. On December 6th Toyota went one step further. After showing off a white android that played a meek rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” on the violin, Toyota’s boss, Katsuaki Watanabe, announced that the company would make electro-mechanical critters a core business. Four areas look promising: nursing, cleaning homes, manufacturing and ferrying people short distances (in a sort of automatic wheelchair).

This is less of a departure than it sounds from Toyota’s current business. The carmaker already uses robots throughout its manufacturing process, so it understands industrial needs. And cars are as much about consumer personality as technology, so Toyota is already in the lifestyle and luxury business.

The company confesses it does not have a clear idea which of its robots will take off in the marketplace, but it will start selling them in the early 2010s based on customer needs. Toyota will centralise its robotics R&D division, which is currently in three separate locations around Japan, and double the number of engineers to 200.

Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer, famously created the “Three Laws of Robotics” which defined the primacy of man relative to machine. Robots may not injure humans, must obey them, and must protect themselves without violating the first two rules. These sound minatory, but as Japan’s population starts to decline due to the low birth-rate, and its number of elderly swell, robots are seen as a solution.

“R not I,” quipped one fellow who grew up in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. That is, “robots, not immigration.” The average Japanese would rather have his bedpan changed by an iron creature comprised of nuts and bolts than by a Chinese or Filipino nurse, he explained.

The country sees robots doing the type of work that Japanese describe as the three Ks (translated as three Ds in English): kiken (dangerous), kitanai (dirty) and kitsui (demanding).

Robotics solved a major industrial problem. “Japan has no visa category in place for low-skilled workers,” notes Jessie Wilson of CLSA, an investment bank, in a report this year. “To manufacturers needing extra hands, robots were a gift from heaven.” According to the International Federation of Robotics, Japan bought 37,000 robots in 2006, between three and four times more than its nearest rivals, America, Germany and South Korea.

But recently Japan’s robots have been of a more frivolous variety. Sony created AIBO, a robotic dog, in 1999, only to put it to sleep in 2006. Robotics is too capital-intensive explained Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s boss; his company is out of the robotics trade.

Honda remains a player: its robot, Asimo, can carry books and serve drinks. In July Mitsubishi showed off androids called Wakamaru that work as receptionists. Standing three feet tall, they recognise faces and have a 10,000-word vocabulary (as well as an off-putting, perpetually perplexed expression). Subaru built a robot that clears landmines.

At the 2007 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, which began late last month, Kokoro, a Japanese manufacturer, showed off a robot for training dentists, which it developed with Nippon Dental University. As student dentists drill into its teeth, replete with sensors, the robot yelps “ouch!” when the work is not up to par. But the robot would really squeal if the dentist accidentally leaned in so much that he or she accidentally pressed upon the robot’s breasts.

Still, most robots in Japan are big, bulky machines that look nothing like their fictional counterparts. This helps explain the industry’s obsession. As middle-aged Japanese men will tell you, their youth was spent devouring a steady diet of anime cartoons in which robots looked and moved like people with powers that far surpassed the space shuttle. They cannot believe that three decades later such robots still do not exist.

So a generation of engineers and corporate chieftains are set on building these robots—if only because ordinary consumer-electronics work is dull by comparison. Besides, as China rises, robots represent one clear area where the country can retain an edge. But given Japan’s current pace and direction, it may soon have to rely on robots to build the robots.

The Economist

JUST below a half-opened garage door a tiny device can be seen at the feet of someone lurking in the shadows. It looks like a blue dragonfly. Then its miniature wings begin to flap as it slips under the door and darts along the street. After rising through the air it stops to hover outside the window of a building several storeys high. There is an opening on the roof, and it slips inside. As it flits from room to room its video-camera “eye” transmits pictures to a screen on a remote-control unit strapped to the wrist of its clandestine operator.

This is not a scene from a James Bond film, in which 007 tests a new device from “Q”, but an animated video produced by Onera, France’s national aerospace centre, to explain REMANTA, a project to develop the technologies needed for miniature robotic aircraft. More bug-like flying devices are being developed in other research laboratories around the world. A few are already small enough to be carried in a briefcase; others are the size of a jet fighter and need a runway for take-off.

Having evolved from military use, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are taking to the air in increasing numbers for public-service and civilian roles. They are being operated by groups as diverse as police, surveyors and archaeologists. A UAV helped firemen track the blaze that recently ravaged southern California. The most immediate advantage of a UAV is cost: operating even a small helicopter can cost $1,000 an hour or more, but the bill for a drone is a fraction of that. However, the growing use of UAVs is causing a number of concerns.

The first is safety. Last month America’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completed its first-ever investigation into an unmanned-aircraft accident. Pilot error was blamed for the crash in Arizona in April 2006 of a 4,500kg (10,000lb) Predator B, a type of UAV used by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was being operated by Customs and Border Protection when its engine was accidentally turned off by the team piloting it from a control room at an army base. No one was hurt, but the NTSB issued 22 recommendations to address what Mark Rosenker, its chairman, described as “a wide range of safety issues involving the civilian use of unmanned aircraft.”

The second concern is privacy. UAVs can peek much more easily and cheaply than satellites and fixed cameras can. Although it is possible to peer into someone’s back garden with Google Earth, the images are not “live”—some are years old. Live satellite images can be impaired by clouds and darkness. A UAV, however, is more flexible. It can get closer to its target, move to new locations faster and hover almost silently above a property or outside a window. And the tiny ones that are coming will be able to fly inside buildings. Before long paparazzi will put cameras in them to snatch pictures of celebrities.

Unmanned aircraft have been around almost as long as powered flight. In the first world war they were used as flying bombs and by the second as radio-controlled targets and for reconnaissance missions. In Afghanistan and Iraq they have also been fitted with missiles.

In more recent years the development of unmanned aircraft has become a process of technological democratisation. Lightweight construction materials, engines, microelectronics, signal-processing equipment and navigation by global-positioning satellites (GPS), are all getting more sophisticated, smaller and cheaper. As a result, so have UAVs.
Flown from afar

A Predator, including ground equipment, costs around $8m. It is capable of operating in harsh conditions for more than a day. Even though a Predator may be flying over a remote part of Iraq, it is more than likely being controlled by pilots working in shifts and sitting in front of a video screen thousands of miles away at an air force base in America. Smaller, lighter and simpler UAV reconnaissance systems are being developed for troops in the field. These can be hand-launched, which reduces the need for remote-control piloting skills. Landings can be as simple as cutting the engine once the UAV has returned from its pre-programmed mission, at which point it flutters down to earth on a parachute.

Some hovering types can land automatically. One such device is made by Microdrones, a German company. Their flying machine looks like a small flying saucer with four rotor blades on stubby arms. It is not much bigger than the laptop computer used to program its flight and monitor what it is looking at. It can stooge around for about 20 minutes carrying video and infra-red cameras. Some police forces have started to try it out. Earlier this year British bobbies used one to keep an eye on a music festival, busting people for drug offences and catching others breaking into cars.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which operates more than a dozen helicopters, has experimented with a foldaway UAV. It has wings and an electric engine, and can be assembled in minutes for hand-launching. It has a flight time of around 70 minutes. At around $30,000 all in, it is a lot cheaper than another new helicopter at around $3m.

Scientists are using UAVs to help with experiments. The Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego flew a fleet of them in stacked formation over the Maldives in the Indian Ocean last year. They were collecting air samples simultaneously from different altitudes for research into the effects of global warming.

In time, UAVs are likely to be employed for all sorts of jobs for which the use of an aircraft big enough to carry a pilot would be too dangerous, impractical or too expensive. Surveyors, for instance, could use a hovering UAV to inspect the walls of a tall building in a crowded city. A television station could use one to show traffic conditions. And as with all new technologies, unmanned vehicles will have uses that have not yet been imagined.

Already, the technology is so easily available that you can build a basic UAV for around $1,000 from model-aircraft parts, the innards of a GPS unit and a Lego Mindstorms robotics kit—just as Chris Anderson has done. Mr Anderson, the editor of WIRED magazine, has set up a website for other DIY-makers of low-cost UAVs.

Not surprisingly aviation officials are watching things closely. “We have just entered a new era, and we have got to be concerned about protecting persons and property,” says Nicholas Sabatini, who is in charge of aviation safety at America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

As the difference between sophisticated model aircraft equipped with auto-pilot systems and cameras and commercial UAVs blurs, the FAA is reconsidering its guidelines for model-flyers. At the moment these basically amount to keeping unmanned planes in sight at all times and away from people, buildings and other aircraft. Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority is working with various industry groups to see what new rules may be needed. As a spokesman points out, UAVs will range from large jet-powered machines capable of flying across the Atlantic to tiny devices, so regulations will vary too depending on their size, weight and speed. Below a certain size, unmanned aircraft could be impossible to regulate. Nor would regulation do much to remove a chilling worry: that a UAV could be used as a weapon, to carry explosives or a biological agent.
Blown away

The smallest UAVS are the most intriguing because they will be able to fly in places where it was never thought aircraft could venture. Just how small might these machines be? The REMANTA bug has a total wingspan of less than 15cm (six inches). It flies by flapping its wings a bit like an insect. This means it needs less power than helicopter-type rotors and should be better able to withstand being blown off-course by wind, says Agnès Luc-Bouhali, a member of the project team.

Such a device can fly and be controlled remotely, but it could not yet conduct a mission like that portrayed in Onera’s video. “Today, that is a dream,” admits Ms Luc-Bouhali. But the team is working on it. Miniaturising power sources and sensors, and fitting REMANTA with systems to operate semi-autonomously in order to avoid obstacles such as walls are the main areas of future research and development.

Such concerns also occupy researchers at Harvard University. They are working on a fly-like robot which weighs only 60 milligrams (0.002 ounces) and has a wingspan of just three centimetres—about the size of a real fly and so most unlikely to be noticed. This means going beyond scaling down existing components, like electric motors, and trying entirely new manufacturing processes. The Harvard “fly-bot” has flown, but so far only on a tether from which it gets external power.

A different approach is being tried by a team at Britain’s Portsmouth University working with a company called ANT Scientific. Next summer the group will enter a robotics competition to be held at a British army urban-warfare training centre. The Portsmouth team is working on a UAV small enough to fit on a hand. Charlie Barker-Wyatt, a member of the university group, says all he can reveal about the device is that it contains sensors, can remain airborne for about 15 minutes, has a range of 500 metres and flies like a “hovering and spinning frisbee”.

Such tiny devices are of less concern to safety officials than bigger UAVs that would cause damage if they hit an aeroplane or crashed to the ground. Until now UAVs have mostly been confined to conflict zones, no-go military areas or remote places. Some operate under the same guidelines as for model aircraft. But they are not welcome in “controlled” airspace, where manned aircraft fly under air-traffic control. The FAA’s Mr Sabatini says his agency does not want to stifle their development, but insists it must at the same time maintain safety standards. This means larger UAVs could be considered “experimental” aircraft and allowed to operate in closely controlled circumstances. But until they have some ability reliably to detect and avoid other aircraft they will have to keep clear of controlled airspace.

Some bigger systems operate like manned aircraft even in remote areas. The “pilots” of the Predator that crashed in Arizona were in contact with air-traffic controllers. But NTSB officials were still concerned about UAVs being flown too much like a computer game rather than as they would be if their pilots were on board.

Strict operating conditions for bigger UAVs might suit aviation firms, which are used to regulation and face competition from unmanned aircraft. Evergreen, a big aerospace group based in Oregon, has set up a UAV operation within its helicopter division. It offers relatively large and sophisticated systems for use in long-range operations, like checking on oil rigs, search and rescue, and wildlife monitoring.

Medium-sized systems might also have to be regulated, especially if used commercially. In the case of the smallest UAVs, the genie is already out of the bottle. When such devices are so small they might not even be noticed it would prove extremely difficult to regulate their use.

Unmanned aircraft will become more common, but how they swarm will depend on how safely they are used and how people react to the invasion of privacy. Some UAV missions may not be very welcome at all. “It smacks of Big Brother if every time you look up there’s a bug looking at you,” reckons the FAA’s Mr Sabatini. Time to buy a good fly swat, perhaps.

The Economist

The competition to make a working robot vehicle has moved from the desert to the mean city streets

ONLY three years ago the world’s most advanced robotic cars struggled to make their way around even basic obstacles such as large rocks and potholes in the road. Despite millions of dollars’ worth of high-tech equipment, the vehicles managed to mimic little of what a human can do behind the wheel. Now, however, they can squeeze into parking places, flip on their indicators before making turns and even display the flair of a London taxi driver when merging into traffic.

This improvement in “autonomous vehicle technology”, as the jargon has it, is partly a result of prodding by America’s defence department, which hopes a third of its ground vehicles will be robotic by 2015. To that end its research arm, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has scaled back the traditional process of handing out large research grants and getting nothing useful in return. Instead, it has been running a series of grand prix for such vehicles. The prix in the latest, due to take place on November 3rd, is $3.5m—of which $2m will go to the vehicle best able to negotiate its way round Victorville, a former air force base in southern California, with $1m and $500,000 to those in second and third places.

The first of DARPA’s Grand Challenges, in 2004, was a flop. The prize on offer then was $1m—winner takes all. The challenge was to follow a course 229km (142 miles) long across a desert using only the satellite-based global positioning system as a guide. That year, no one claimed the prize.

In 2005, the robots did much better. Stanley, Stanford University’s modified Volkswagen Touareg, won the money; four other vehicles also finished the course. So this time, having allowed the teams an extra intervening year to tinker with their machines, DARPA has made the Challenge more challenging. Not only must entrants keep to the tarmac and obey the rules of the road, they must also avoid colliding with a number of other cars being steered round the base by stunt drivers.

The desert vehicles relied on radar, laser range-finders and speedy, cleverly programmed computers to avoid meddlesome objects while racing from point to point. The urban robots will use similar technology to accomplish much more difficult tasks. In effect, they will be taking the examination to receive a driving licence by demonstrating the ability to park in narrow spaces, slow down and indicate appropriately at junctions, and so on—as well, of course, as avoiding collisions.

Thirty-five teams are spending the week leading up to the event competing for 20 spots in the race. The favourites are Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University (whose car came second in 2005). As in a more conventional motor race, the logos of their sponsors—companies such as Google, Intel and Red Bull—cover almost every centimZetre of their vehicles, reflecting millions of dollars in investments.

However, this is not a game that only the well-heeled can play. Indeed, the Stanford and Carnegie Mellon teams were small operations three years ago; as is usually the way, sponsorship followed success. Other academic entrants, such as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, remain closer to the amateur spirit. And there are also ad hoc groups of enthusiasts such as Austin Robot Technology, which is composed of a mixture of workers at IBM, AMD and Sun Microsystems, and members of the University of Texas. There are even some corporate entries. The Oshkosh Truck Corporation, for instance, has modified some of its off-road military vehicles for the competition (with the aid, as it happens, of an additional $1m grant from DARPA).

Whether any of the entrants will stay the course and win a virtual driving licence remains to be seen. But if they do not do so this time, no doubt they will next, or maybe the time after that. The established mixture of competitiveness and amateur fair play will surely continue (teams routinely patch up each other’s wrecks after a crash). And that seems to produce for DARPA what many millions spent on more run-of-the-mill research projects has failed to generate.

The Economist

EVER since Karol Capek, a Czech playwright, used the term in the early 1920s to describe artificial people, robots have usually appeared in popular culture with human characteristics and made by big companies. There was the Model B-9 Environmental Control Robot in “Lost in Space”; Rosie, the robot maid in “The Jetsons”; C-3PO in “Star Wars”; and the future Governor Schwarzenegger as “The Terminator”.

In the real world, however, things took a different turn. The number of robots has grown rapidly, but they are not humanoid. After the first Unimate robot-arm began work on a General Motors assembly line in 1961, industrial robots of all shapes and sizes invaded the factory floor: there are now about 1m of them worldwide, around half in Asia. There are also hordes of service robots, vacuuming floors, trimming the grass on golf courses and soon—with luck—doing the ironing. Specialist robots can creep inside a patient’s chest cavity to attach electrodes to a pacemaker or along sewer pipes looking for cracks. Robots have also joined the armed forces: some 4,000 are said to be in action in Iraq and Afghanistan doing things such as clearing mines or, as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), flying reconnaissance and even combat missions.

Many of today’s robots still have a human controller somewhere, but they are gaining more and more autonomy. By 2015, America’s armed forces want about half their armed vehicles to be robotised. To further that aim, this weekend the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is holding a contest for robot vehicles capable of operating on their own in busy cities (see article).

What is intriguing about this competition is the sort of teams taking part. They are mostly university groups, small companies and enthusiasts. Big corporations are acting mainly as sponsors. A similar sort of thing can be seen in the development of UAVs for civilian use. Indeed, so cheap and so easily available has the technology become that even hobbyists are making UAVs (see article). The culture of hacking is spreading from software to ever more elaborate and capable hardware.

A robot for granny

With luck there will be many more robotic devices to do not just dirty and dangerous jobs, but also tiresome but necessary ones, such as fetching and carrying for bedridden people. Robots can do some of these jobs better and more cheaply than humans can. But the technology’s spread also brings worries.

Aviation officials have rightly expressed safety concerns about the growing use of civilian UAVs. Some new rules may be required to deal with robots as they become more widespread and gain more autonomy. UAVs that fly in the same areas as manned aircraft should have the ability to avoid collisions, for instance. The bigger worries are to do with privacy: some of these flying machines will be so small that they will be able to fly inside buildings, filming everything they see; heaven knows what paparazzi will do with them.

Any new regulations will need to be considered carefully, in order not to stifle innovation. But common sense and existing laws may not always be enough to ensure that robots and people live happily together.

National Transportation Safety Board

Washington, DC – As a result of its first investigation of an accident involving an unmanned aircraft (UA), the National Transportation Safety Board today issued a total of 22 safety recommendations to address what NTSB Chairman Mark V. Rosenker said were “a wide range of safety issues involving the civilian use of unmanned aircraft.”

The safety recommendations approved by the Board stemmed from the April 25, 2006, accident in which a turboprop- powered Predator B operated on a surveillance mission by the United States Customs and Border Protection (CPB) crashed in a sparsely populated residential area near Nogales, Arizona. No one on the ground was injured; the remotely piloted 66- foot wingspan aircraft was substantially damaged.

The Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the accident was the pilot’s failure to use checklist procedures when switching operational control from a console that had become inoperable due to a “lockup” condition, which resulted in the fuel valve inadvertently being shut off and the subsequent total loss of engine power, and a lack of a flight instructor in the Ground Control Station.

At the Board meeting, the NTSB highlighted several areas of particular interest including: the design and certification of the unmanned aircraft system; pilot qualification and training; the integration of UAs into the air traffic management system; and audio records of all UA operations- related communications.

“This investigation has raised questions about the different standards for manned and unmanned aircraft and the safety implications of this discrepancy,” said Rosenker. “Why, for example, were numerous unresolved lock-ups of the pilot’s control console even possible while such conditions would never be tolerated in the cockpit of a manned aircraft?”

Expressing concerns about how manned and unmanned aircraft will share the same airspace, Chairman Rosenker said, “The fact that we approved 22 safety recommendations based on our investigation of a single accident is an indication of the scope of the safety issues these unmanned aircraft are bringing into the National Airspace System.”

The Safety Board’s investigation also revealed that the pilot was not proficient in the performance of emergency procedures, which led to the accident. “The pilot is still the pilot, whether he is at a remote console or on the flight deck,” said Rosenker. “We need to make sure that the system by which pilots are trained and readied for flight is rigorous and thorough. With the potential for thousands of these unmanned aircraft in use years from now, the standards for pilot training need to be set high to ensure that those on the ground and other users of the airspace are not put in jeopardy.”

On the issue of UA operations-related communications, the Safety Board noted that there is no equivalent of a cockpit voice recorder at the pilot’s control console and that the pilot’s communications with air traffic controllers and others were not recorded. To enhance the efficacy of future investigations of UA incidents and accidents, the NTSB recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) require all conversations, including telephone conversations between unmanned aircraft pilots and air traffic control, other UA pilots, and other assets that provide operational support to unmanned system aircraft system operations, be recorded and retained.

Among the additional safety recommendations sent to the FAA are:

* Require that established procedures for handling piloted aircraft emergencies be applied to unmanned aircraft systems.

* Require that all unmanned aircraft operators report to the FAA all incidents and malfunctions that affect safety; require that operators are analyzing these data in an effort to improve safety; and evaluate these data to determine whether programs and procedures remain effective in mitigating safety risks.

Among the 17 safety recommendations sent to U. S. Customs and Border Protection, the operator of the unmanned aircraft involved in the accident, are:

* Require that pilots be trained concerning the expected performance and flight path of an unmanned aircraft anytime communication with the aircraft is lost.

* Conduct face-to-face meetings between pilots of unmanned aircraft and working-level air traffic controllers to clearly define responsibilities and actions require for standard and nonstandard UA operations.

* Identify and correct the causes of the lockups in the pilot’s control console.

* Revise the U. S. Customs and Border Protection’s pilot training program to ensure pilot proficiency in executing emergency procedures.

* Require that a backup pilot or another person who can provide an equivalent level of safety as a backup pilot be readily available during the operation of a UA system.

* Develop a safety plan, which ensure that hazards to the National Airspace System and persons on the ground introduced by the U. S. Customs and Border Protection UA system operation are identified and that necessary actions are taken to mitigate the corresponding safety risks to the public over the life of the program.

After adopting the safety recommendations, the Board voted to convene a public forum on the safety of UA operations and the methodologies to use when investigating UA accident and incidents. The dates and agenda for the 2- to 3-day forum will be announced once details are finalized.

The complete UA accident report can be accessed at http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20060509X00531&key= 1

A synopsis of the Board’s report, including the probable cause and recommendations, is available on the NTSB’s website, www.ntsb.gov, under “Board Meetings.” The Board’s full report will be available on the website in several weeks.

NTSB Media Contact: Peter Knudson
202-314-6100 / peter.knudson@ntsb.gov