The 35-year-old computer engineer from Barcelona has created a robot able to save lives in thousands of meters underground, even in underground passageway, tunnels and caves.
Tomé has won the ‘Subterranean Challenge’ competition, from September 21 to 24 in Kentucky. The competition recognizes its project called Dynamo as the best technological solution to the construction of a robot with full range up to 12 kilometers, which can be coordinated with other robots, and which can find all kinds of objects or survivors in underground passageway, tunnels and caves. Tomé joined the competition two years ago, although the competition started four years ago. He has gotten to surpass other teams formed by the most prestigious universities in the world. He used the award, endowed with $750,000 to create the Keybotic Company based in Barcelona, which is part of Barcelona Activa business incubator.
As Tomé explains in the radio interview on Rac 1 radio station, building robots has been his passion since age 12 and he tells us, "We need to imagine some kind of dog without head. The robot must hold on four legs because it is extremely difficult only on two. The robot makes a three-dimensional map of the environment, analyzes it, understands it and decides actions. But he must work with coordination, sharing the tasks with other robots to locate people or objects".
