R2D2 Robot Rescues Kitten Stuck In A Drain

West Valley City's Public Works Department in Utah received a call about a kitten trapped inside a drain pipe, sent a crew to investigate, located the animal using a pole camera lowered into the pipe, and then ran into the fundamental problem of kitten rescue operations: the kitten would not budge. Coaxing did not work. The pole camera had done its job of finding the animal but offered no mechanism for getting it out. The crew made a decision that was both practical and perfect: they sent in R2D2. R2D2 is a custom remote-controlled crawler, equipped with a live camera and lights, that West Valley City's stormwater crew uses to inspect the condition of underground pipes, which are typically inhabited only by water and the occasional piece of debris. On this occasion the pipe was inhabited by a frightened kitten who had gotten itself in but had not worked out how to get itself out. R2D2 was lowered into the pipe, driven carefully toward the kitten, and used to gently and repeatedly nudge the animal in the direction of the opening, step by step, until the kitten emerged into the daylight and into the hands of a waiting crew member. The kitten appeared uninjured.

West Valley City shared video of the rescue on Facebook alongside an official statement that covered the relevant facts with admirable economy: R2D2 is usually used to inspect pipes, but now it can add kitten rescuer to its list of functions. The city followed up by thanking its Public Works team for the rescue. The video of R2D2 trundling through a drain pipe behind a small cat has been widely shared, partly because it is genuinely funny to watch and partly because it contains something people seem to appreciate in their local government, namely a public works department that received a call about a kitten in a drain and responded by deploying whatever technology they had available until the problem was solved. The robot is named R2D2 for the same reason most things that look vaguely like a wheeled droid get named R2D2, which is that the resemblance is hard to ignore once someone points it out. The Star Wars character the real R2D2 is named for did not, to anyone's knowledge, rescue cats. The West Valley City version has now done so. Its resume has been updated accordingly.

Source:https://sheets.works/story/r2d2-got-the-kitten-out?r=stories