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London's Robotic Fire Brigade
dustpan writes "The BBC has a story up about a quartet of robotic fire fighters that the London Fire Brigade is testing and with which have been achieving 'tremendous results.' The robots were developed by QinetiQ, which is a defense contractor. The LFB has been testing the units since last year and the machines are primarily used in fires involving acetylene canisters. The group commander for hazardous materials and environmental protection with the LFB says that the robots have cut the time to resolve these potential hazards from 24 hours to 3. From the article: 'Three years ago we were shutting down parts of London for over 24 hours every other week. Now it doesn't even make the news.'"
(UAV engineer here)
Not necessarily true. Like most UGVs, it has autonomous terrain handling, station keeping and obstacle avoidance functions. But it requires a human navigator, and a human operator for the effectors and other payload delivery.
So, you can accurately say it's a "robotically piloted waldo" if you wish. The media likes to simplify this into simply "robot," granted, and not without some sensationalism.
I can see the fnords!
I've been programming, repairing, and designing end effectors for industrial robots for about 10 years now. Here's a real quick and simple example of how robots make decisions.
When you program an industrial robot, you position the end effector in a particular point in space, program that point, then position the end effector in another point and then give it a command on how you want it to move there: straight line, arc, air cut, etc.
What I don't have to do is determine the speed and encoder count shift needed for each individual servo motor (axis) on the robot. The internal logic of the robot does that. On a standard 6 axis robot, it would take hours to program a single straight line if you had to program a path for each servo motor. I tried it in school once, never again.
Teleoperated machines have a colloquial term in two syllables, the "Waldo". This from an old Heinlein story "Waldo & Magic Incorporated".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear