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Anna Konda, the Robotic Firefighter
Roland Piquepaille writes "In fact, Anna Konda is a robotic fire hose moving like a snake. This robot, which has been developed in Norway by SINTEF, is 3 m long and weighs 70 kg. The snake contains 20 water hydraulic motors that move the robotic joints. And the energy needed to power these motors comes from water pressurized to 100 bars and already available inside the fire hose. This gives enough energy to this water-powered robot to climb up stairs, to lift a car up off the ground or even break through a wall. Very clever design! The designers think that this robot could not only replace humans to fight fires when it's too dangerous for them, but could also be used for subsea operations or explosion prevention. An additional overview contains more details and pictures of this snake robot."
The next SciFi channel movie.
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
I'll bet there aren't ANY jokes to be made about the second pic of Pål Liljebäck with that impressive thing...
Imagine the possibilities!
We could fight forest fires better
Is there anywere in either artical that says how it moves forwards? I'm currently making a robot snake of my own, and the rectilinear motion is by far the most difficult part of the physical design. I'm assuming it uses wheel, but can tell from the images.
Great stuff. It not entirely new though.
This is my fave out there at the mo. Snake link (click the images for vids)
Because you can - or because you should?
that's a porn star name if i ever heard one. perhaps a chick with dick performer..
Here's the real link to the research. As usual, Roland the Plogger is posting a story from a blog, maximizing ad revenue, and the actual reference has been lost. One would think that Slashdot's "editors" would be wise to this by now, but they still don't get it.
It;s only a prototype; the water stream that comes out is more like a garden hose than a fire hose.
What kind of fire engine puts out 100 bars?? That's 1450 psi! The typical city pumper is designed for 200 psi. Most of the hoses are only rated to a couple hundred. They need to seriously dial down the pressure requirements if this is to be used in any kind of existing firefighting application.
It's in interesting idea, but it also has the usual drawbacks, namely it is extremely difficult to move 200 feet of 2-1/2" for a team of firefighters when the line is charged - the weight is not the only problem. A charged line is stiff (ha, ha), so moving it arount corners, into rooms, up and down stairs, etc. is very awkward. You can't just drain a line every time you want to move it. It takes too long. So, you normally have to move a line while it's completely empty (called "flaking" the line), then charge it, or after it's charged, fight with the line the whole way. On top of all that, it's very easy to kink or even twist and decouple hose, which is, of course, disasterous. Normally what we do is carry as much line as we think we are going to need to a safe zone of the structure we're fighting, then flake it into big loops right there. That way we have all the hose we need in one place, and we can just extend into the hot zone without kinking, and also dragging the charged line the minimum distance to do the work we are going to do.
There is also the other problem: We typically charge our lines to the point where the nozzle-man's feet just leave the ground, then we ease back so they are just barely on the ground. This maximizes our flow into the area we are fighting. With a two-person nozzle team that means we have in the neighborhood of 600-700 lbs of ballast to offset the reaction force at the tip (the force of the water exiting the nozzle that is pushing back on it, which would result in the hose flying all over the place otherwise). (The 600-700 lbs is the weight of two firefighters, their bunker gear, air packs, etc.). The robot only weights 70kg, so it won't have nearly the control of the tip, which means that you can't push nearly the water.
I could see this as a good application when trying to work in a warehouse or supermarket, where the distance from the door is large. However, the device is going to need assistance to move a great distance since the line has to be charged in order for it to function, but if the line is charged it becomes much harder to move the line. That combination seems to defeat the purpose - of keeping firefighters out of harm's way.
Personally I'm in favor of our current option "b" - trench cut the roof (long cut perpendicular to the path of the fire, in an area we know is good), then drown the cut with water from a ladder pipe, which causes a water curtain - the good part of the building is saved by the water curtain, which means we can fight the remainder from a position of strength.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
I have HAD it with this motherfucking hose on this motherfucking fire truck!
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
Her greatest nemesis: Flameosapien!
Fnord.
Keep the hose partially charged when moving, to stop kinking, then max the pressure when you get it in position. This would be a great asset when fighting shipboard fires where you do not have the optional advantage of fighting the fire from outside the structure.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The robot war had been lost... We destroyed unmanned aircraft, and beat back the evil spider bots... But these damn snakes kept crushing our skulls and spraying water all over our carcasses, making them wet.
You take it, I don't want it...
It was more exciting than that, when I skimmed it the first time and thought it read, "Robotic Anna Kournikova".
I was going to run out and buy one to, ah, um, improve my tennis game.
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Urm? Right. Well actually I am making a snake. Its on my desk. I'm using Oopic-r for the brain and building my own desing for the body, curently using 8 servos, 50 universal joints and one range finder. What I hope to do, is solve the rectalinear motion issue by using a derivitive of real snakes own process, which is a longditudinal wave of flexing rib muscles, which creates a "slip and grip" tranfer of force and motion via the belly scales. Though this tends only to be used by larger constrictors.
Try not to make assumptions regarding posts and their posters on the basis of their literacy skills. Ever. It makes you look foolish in the long run.
Because you can - or because you should?
Hmmm...this looks like the kind of handy tool Kryten would be able to attach to his "groinal socket".
make a hose that can stiffen and hold its bent/curved shape when under pressure? That way you could use existing building structural components to "brace" the hose
..........FULL STOP.
The blog of 'Roland' earns them a very tidy sum.
It amazes me that guys like you can't see the obvious: why else would every single submission by 'Roland' get plastered on Slashdot? Why else the earlier submission of the same article (from the original sources, no less) by other submitters is always ignored?
'Roland' is just an extension of Slashdot's marketing machine. How can you imagine otherwise?
The Worlds Most Sophisticated Firehose
(Dagbladet.no): Tenk deg en situasjon hvor du er innestengt som følge av brann, snøras eller jordskjelv, og det er for farlig for hjelpemannskapet å gå inn og redde deg. Det er da Snakefighteren Anna Konda kommer glidende inn, på skrå sidelengs som en ørkenslange.
(Dagbladet.no): Imagine a situation where you're trapped due to a fire, snow avalaunch or earthquake, and it's too dangerous for the rescue crew to enter to save you. That's when the Snakefighter Anna Konda comes gliding in, sideways like a desert snake.
Hun er verdens sterkeste og mest avanserte brannslange, ifølge SINTEF-forskerne Pål Liljebäck og Øyvind Stavdal som har utviklet henne.
She's the world's strongest and most advanced firehose, according to SINTEF researchers Pål Liljebäck and Øyvind Stavdal, who developed her.
En Anakonda av metall, smidig, sterk og smart, inspirert av naturen selv. Hun kommer hun seg frem gjennom alt slags terreng, og har sanser som en vanlig slange ikke har.
An Anaconda of metal, agile, strong and smart, inspired by nature itself. She moves through all kinds of terrain, and has senses that a regular snake lacks.
Hun kan heve hodet og sprute vann, slå gjennom vegger med en slagkraft på 700 kg i tyngdefeltet, løfte vekk objekter for å frigjøre fastklemte dyr eller mennesker og bringe gassmasker. Ved hjelp av infrarødt kamera, ultralyd og sensorer skal hun kunne finne kropper og kartlegge et område.
She can lift her head and spray water, break down walls with a gravity of 700 kg, lift away objects to free trapped animals or people, and bring gas masks. With an infrared camera, ultrasound and sensors, she'll be able to find bodies and map an area.
- Snakefighteren representerer en ny æra i brannslukning, sier Pål Liljebäck ved SINTEFs avdeling for anvendt kybernetikk til Dagbladet.no.
- The Snakefighter represents a new era in fire extinguishing, says Pål Liljebäck at SINTEF's department for applied cybernetics to Dagbladet.no.
Han presiserer at slangen er et verktøy, ikke en erstatning for brannfolk, for hun er ikke skapt for å dra med seg objekter.
He notes that the snake is a tool, not a replacement for fire crews, since she wasn't created for towing objects.
Vannhydraulikk
Anna Konda drives av vannhydraulikk, som er nærmest et ikke-eksisterende fagfelt i dag, ifølge de to forskerne. Det vil si at det er vannkraft som driver musklene til den tre meter lange, 16 cm i diameter tjukke og 70 kilo tunge slangen. På et brannåsted kan hun tilkobles en brannslange. Er det snakk om en sammenrast bygning, kan hun ha en innebygget dieselmotor og ha med eget vann. Hun beveger seg med en hastighet på 20 - 30 cm i sekundet, men målet er en fart på en meter i sekundet.
Anna Konda is powered by water hydraulics, a virtually non-existing field today, according to the two scientists. This means that water power is powering the "muscles" of the 3 meter long, 16 cm in diameter thick and 70 kg heavy snake. In a fire location she can be connected to a firehose. In the case of a collapsed building, she can carry her own diesel engine and her own water. She moves with a speed of 20 - 30 cm per second, but the goal is a speed of 1 meter per second.
Slangen skal dels fjernstyres, dels ta egne avgjørelser. Hun bruker så kompliserte bevegelser at hun selv må greie føle seg frem i terrenget og beregne hvordan hun skal ta seg frem. Men en operatør skal kunne gi overordnede instrukser.
The snake will partly be remote controlled, partly make her own decisions. She uses such complex movements that she has to feel herself through the terrain and calc
Due to the complete lack of pictures in the source article, here's some for your appetite...
Anna Konda in action (JPEG, 844x453)
Close-up of a segment (JPEG, 280x210)
Was that a tentacle joke?
In what universe is an extra firefighter not practical?
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
Its nice to hear from people who actually know their stuff. I can't think of any other forum where that can happen.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If you're gonna have snakes, you must have planes, too.
There are ladies on Slashdot?
For some other snake robots, check out these links:
http://www.snakerobots.com/
http://arctangent.8k.com/snake/snakemain.htm
Space and Computers.
Husband replacement?
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
Only on Slashdot is the first post modded Redundant...
Hate to burst your bubble, but this Internet of ours is primarily a textual medium. As far as extrinsic ethos goes, your literacy skills are all you've got. We have literally no other way to judge you as a rhetor.
You're welcome to protest that such things shouldn't be important. But they are. Sorry.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
not to pick a snit.. but please defend your statement this Internet of ours is primarily a textual medium
do you mean internet, or WWW? (one is a subset of the other)
in terms of data volume, I doubt the majority of the bits are for plain old ascii..
I bet reading all text on the internet RIGHT NOW would take less time than studying EVERY picture available or watch EVERY video available.
I personally think of it as more along the lines of a communications medium.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
In ours, sadly. This thing is a nice concept, but TFA says it needs 100bar water. The normal pressures for firefighting are around 8-20bar, so it'd take specialised pumping equipment and hoses for it to work.
That's not a showstopper of course, but it'd probably be cheaper just to build a conventional electric robot like Quinetiq's Talon based firefighting bot, which can pull conventional 63mm fire hoses.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Great ... but what about the many people who are afraid of snakes? How is the anna konda going to help them overcoming their fear? Hssssssssssssss ...
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
I ain't no plogger. Just a polymer engineer with a taste for code.
...This Cartoon. Seems like Fire/EMS are the only fields in America where pride is still a part of the job. How is this machine supposed to cut holes in roofs, pull people out of homes, pull people out of cars without breaking their necks, and ventilate a house? Not a firefighter if it can't do all that and more :P
Sig: I stole this sig.
Anyone remember the self-assembling, fire-fighting tube / triangle things in Metropolis? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(2001_film )
Funny how Roland's comments are usually modded -1, whereas he gets all his submissions accepted. See http://slashdot.org/~Roland+Piquepaille/
Perhaps Slashdot's editors like his, um, "writing style" better than the rest of us.
Anyone up to writing a Firefox plugin to filter the Piquepaillespam out of Slashdot?every story he submits
:wq
Does it run Python?
Hate to burst your bubble, but this Internet of ours is primarily a textual medium.
Well I hate to pop yours, but I actually access the text content of the web via a screen reader, so, text is not the primary medium for all users. Nor is it the only medium for most. But this is not my point. My point is that a wise reader (IMO) assesses the value of comment not on the style of its writing, nor on the accuracy of its execution as a piece of prose, but rather on the merit of its content when regarded conceptually. Einstein was a terrible speller (hence my name). Should GR and SR have been dismissed because of pedantic grammar Nazis regarding his work as 'childish'? (as was implied about my post - dispite me actually knowing a great deal about snakes and snake robots).
No. Literacy is not equatable to intelligence or knowledge. We as humans (most of us at least) have amazing powers of error correction. Thus if I spell speech 'speach', it may give rise to an easy op. for a jibe, but anyone reading will still understand what I've said.
So I strongly disagree with your assertion that this Internet of ours is primarily a textual medium.. It is a collection of mixed media for the storage, retrieval and presentation of information. And 'We have literally no other way to judge you as a rhetor' is not true either. As I have described, we can correct the errrors made in text to see passed such inaccuracies, and then judge on induction, argument, empirical evidence and other such 'deeper' indications of true merit.
I feel my point is proven by this distraction from the topic at hand. i.e. robot snakes. Let me know if you want to know more about them.
BTW this is not meant as a flame/troll. I feel rather strongly about this sub thread's topic. Anyone truly interested in this "literacy [!]= merit of putative argument" please read up about dyslexia. I personally have an IQ similar to that of Einstein in abstract reasoning, but the 'Reading Age' of a 10 year old. Neurodivercity is a reality for more than 10% of web users. So dismissing us would be more foolish than dismissing Firefox users 2 years ago. Or Safari users now. ---rant ends---
Because you can - or because you should?
http://www.sintef.com/upload/IKT/9023/AnnaKonda.jp g
One of those really powerful supersoaker squirt guns, but a squirt gun nonetheless.
The segements don't appear to have enough space inside to pass a decent-sized hose, nor room for a valve to control that much water and as is pointed out in another thread, the force of the water leaving a decent size hose would move this thing out of position anyway.
It seemed like a good idea. Now I'm not so sure it's practical.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Why does this remind me of the kool-aid pitcher?
Perhaps you should have considered the links provided by the original poster before launching on your rant. Teach limited himself to talking about extrinsic ethos, which is how a communicator establishes credibility apart from the content of his argument. Your rebuttal basically amounts to saying that the internal logic of an argument is also important. That is known as intrinsic logos, and it was never denied.
Clearly Einstein was worthy of our attention regardless of how poor his grammar may have been. Yet if he was here today as one pseudonymous Slashdot poster among thousands, his ability to make his quality thoughts stand out would be hampered by his limited communication skills. This is simply a reality of the medium, though one would hope that the quality of his ideas would overcome this limitation.
So the main point here is not that poorly written comments are worthless, but rather that realistically such comments must overcome their stylistic weaknesses in order to be heard.
I understand your argument, and the perceived relevance of Teach's - I simply don't agree with it, as it is presented as absolutist. You can not be so absolutist about language, in any meaningful way. Reading some Wittgenstein may convince Teach of this if he feels my protestations incredible. The Tractatus Philisophicus being a good, if heavy going start.
to quote Teach "We have literally no other way to judge you as a rhetor."
This is not true. Is it? (read back for context of quote)
You seem to concede this yourself by saying "though one would hope that the quality of his [Einstein's] ideas would overcome this limitation.". i.e. the quality of Einstein's ideas is another way to judge him (and anyone for that matter) as a "rhetor". One erroneously denied by Teach.
If you truly "hope" this to be the case, promoting the absolutism that Teach has, is rather counter productive, isn't it?
Just like inaccuracy of syntax, superficiality is inevitable, to a degree. It doesn't mean we should aim towards it. Maybe then we'd have managed to talk on topic (re snakes) for a little longer...?
Because you can - or because you should?
I am more inclined to consider and respect the opinions of someone who is able to express their views consisely and eloquently. I don't believe that this is merely a superficial preference. A well worded and well structured argument typically reflects the application of intelligence and careful reasoning, so I will judge such writing to be more worthy of my attention.
The quality of a person's ideas provides a way to judge him as a thinker. The presentation of those ideas - structure, grammar, spelling - is the only way to judge the person as a rhetor. I am defining a rhetor as an eloquent communicator.
These two abilities (to think and to communicate) can be considered as two separate axes. It is possible to be be high on either axis and low on the other, as in the example of Einstein. However, there is generally a strong correlation between the two. A poorly written opinion must overcome two obstacles in order to be heard: First, the impression that the author is careless or foolish, and second, the higher level of mental work required to decipher the author's intended meaning. Anyone wishing to be heard would be wise not to create such obstacles.
Incidentally, I find this discussion vastly more interesting than robotic snakes.
Three points:
;)
"The presentation of those ideas - structure, grammar, spelling - is the only way to judge the person as a rhetor. I am defining a rhetor as an eloquent communicator."
In which case you've been arguing a tautology all this time. Mechanicaly and determanistically regurgitating logical and linguistic vocabulary. Which goes little way to solving anything. But I refute this, as a rhetor of nonsense, is of no merit as a rhetor, in my mind.
"A poorly written opinion must overcome two obstacles in order to be heard: First, the impression that the author is careless or foolish," This is precisely the prejudiced ignorance I would like to see lessened, not encouraged. Saying, such ignorance is inevitable, is careless in itself. Ironically the accusation being levelled at me, when such erroneous opinions are formed of me. I think you accept this is not so. So please don't perpetuate this misconception.
"Anyone wishing to be heard would be wise not to create such obstacles."
Please read about dyslexia. If you were mindful of it, you would be as embarrassed to say this to me, as you would "you would be wise to walk up those stairs" to a wheelchair user.
And anyway, snakes are cool
Because you can - or because you should?
You refute my tautology? :)
I meant no offense towards you, and I apologize for implying that you should simply overcome your dyslexia. I didn't mean to communicate that, but I can see now how it sounded that way. It seems to me that you have done very well with communicating clearly in our discussion, so I wasn't directing that comment at you personally.
I enjoy language. I enjoy thinking about it, dissecting it, and attempting to use it well. I see that many people today don't care for language, and can be extremely lazy and thoughtless in how they present their thoughts. This is especially true in internet forums.
I have grown impatient about this and I tend to disregard people who write as if they can't be bothered to make their words presentable before carelessly spewing them out. In most cases, it really is carelessness, but as you've pointed out there are exceptions, and so there is always the risk of misjudging. This risk is insignificant when I'm scanning through 30 pages of slashdot comments, because I'm probably just wasting time anyway. If we met in person or we were having a longer interaction (such as this discussion), then I would be much more careful about judging, and your intelligence would easily shine through any grammatical nitpicks I might have. It certainly has done so today.
I will seek to learn from this and to be less quick to judge. Thanks for an enjoyable discussion!
And thank you :)
Because you can - or because you should?