What are your thoughts on how technology advancement in the next 30 years would change the way of this kind of rescue mission? Say in 2040, can a group of robots finish the mission in one day with ease? That will be awesome, people can be rescued from bad situations much sooner.
It'll probably change things so it'll never happen in the first place.
By that time even poor kids in rural Thailand will be carrying smartphones on them at all times.
Those, combined with location-based awareness will warn them just as they're about to enter the cave "uh, are you sure you want to do that? Look at the current weather forecast....".
I cannot imagine how robots could be used for this kind of rescue in the near future. Each situation like this is too unique to allow for a generic 'life-saving robot'. Even if we were to really try to develop a state-of-the-art cave diving rescue robot, what would we use it for in this case? We still would have to have people working crisis psycology and sitting with the kids as they were extracted, and some way to get the status of the robot as it is kilometers underground with no signal and no easy way we can have a 2km cable. We would still have to figure out how to get the people actually out, which was only really accomplished in this case by getting the best of the best to teach the kids to get themselves out. A robot would not be able to help a child fit through a tiny hole underwater in the dark
I agree with you taking care of people psycologically is probably the weak point of a robot task force. But in terms of pure technology advancement, I 'll just throw some random possibilities here for discussion.
Remember even as of today AI can compete on a high level of huge video games, face recognition, natural language processing, playing Go/Chess game, etc. Imagine in 30 years, all the robots, armed with AI and made of materials a few times stronger than whatever we have today, should be able to scan, learn, adapt and go. Another minor point, the robots can probably carry some heavy machines (or laser guns) and just pound hard on the cave's narrow sections to make the passage wider. Etc.
What are your thoughts on how technology advancement in the next 30 years would change the way of this kind of rescue mission? Say in 2040, can a group of robots finish the mission in one day with ease? That will be awesome, people can be rescued from bad situations much sooner.