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.'"

Comments

Same platform different end-effectors

[icebike]

Its the same platform type police have been using for years now.

Nothing new here, other than the uniform of the operators.

Is it really a robot when its driven and operated by a remote human? It has no autonomous functionality.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[bughunter]

(UAV engineer here)

It has no autonomous functionality.

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.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[iron spartan]

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.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of bomb-disposal "robots" have stair-climbing wheels attached to one end-these typically are small wheels with large spikes on.

Anyway, real Daleks don't climb stairs, they just level the building.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[MichaelSmith]

Anyway, real Daleks don't climb stairs, they just level the building.

All you have to do is wait then. The acetylene will do that for you.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[Nefarious Wheel]

Teleoperated machines have a colloquial term in two syllables, the "Waldo". This from an old Heinlein story "Waldo & Magic Incorporated".

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[Jurily]

Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor. He was not in fact a particularly small robot. His
silver body gleamed in the dusty sunbeams and shook with the continual barrage which the building
was still undergoing.
He did, however, look pitifully small as the gigantic black tank rolled to a halt in front of him. The
tank examined him with a probe. The probe withdrew.
Marvin stood there.
"Out of my way little robot," growled the tank.
"I'm afraid," said Marvin, "that I've been left here to stop you."
The probe extended again for a quick recheck. It withdrew again.
"You? Stop me?" roared the tank. "Go on!"
"No, really I have," said Marvin simply.
"What are you armed with?" roared the tank in disbelief.
"Guess," said Marvin.
The tank's engines rumbled, its gears ground. Molecule-sized electronic relays deep in its micro-
brain flipped backwards and forwards in consternation.
"Guess?" said the tank.

[...]

"Yes, go on," said Marvin to the huge battle machine, "you'll never guess."
"Errmmm ..." said the machine, vibrating with unaccustomed thought, "laser beams?"
Marvin shook his head solemnly.
"No," muttered the machine in its deep guttural rumble, "Too obvious. Anti-matter ray?" it
hazarded.
"Far too obvious," admonished Marvin.
"Yes," grumbled the machine, somewhat abashed, "Er ... how about an electron ram?"
This was new to Marvin.
"What's that?" he said.
"One of these," said the machine with enthusiasm.
From its turret emerged a sharp prong which spat a single lethal blaze of light. Behind Marvin a
wall roared and collapsed as a heap of dust. The dust billowed briefly, then settled.
"No," said Marvin, "not one of those."
"Good though, isn't it?"
"Very good," agreed Marvin.
"I know," said the Frogstar battle machine, after another
moment's consideration, "you must have one of those new Xanthic
Re-Structron Destabilized Zenon Emitters!"

"Nice, aren't they?" said Marvin.
"That's what you've got?" said the machine in considerable awe.
"No," said Marvin.
"Oh," said the machine, disappointed, "then it must be ..."
"You're thinking along the wrong lines," said Marvin, "You're failing to take into account
something fairly basic in the relationship between men and robots."
"Er, I know," said the battle machine, "is it ..." it tailed off into thought again.
"Just think," urged Marvin, "they left me, an ordinary, menial robot, to stop you, a gigantic heavy-
duty battle machine, whilst they ran off to save themselves. What do you think they would leave me
with?"
"Oooh, er," muttered the machine in alarm, "something pretty damn devastating I should expect."
"Expect!" said Marvin, "oh yes, expect. I'll tell you what they
gave me to protect myself with shall I?"
"Yes, alright," said the battle machine, bracing itself.
"Nothing," said Marvin.
There was a dangerous pause.
"Nothing?" roared the battle machine.
"Nothing at all," intoned Marvin dismally, "not an electronic sausage."
The machine heaved about with fury.
"Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit!" it roared, "Nothing, eh? Just don't think, do they?"
"And me," said Marvin in a soft low voice, "with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left
side."
"Makes you spit, doesn't it?"
"Yes," agreed Marvin with feeling.
"Hell that makes me angry," bellowed the machine, "think I'll smash that wall down!"
The electron ram stabbed out another searing blaze of light and took out the wall next to the
machine.
"How do you think I feel?" said Marvin bitterly.
"Just ran off and left you, did they?" the machine thundered.
"Yes," said Marvin.
"I think I'll shoot down their bloody ceiling as well!" raged the tank.
It took out the ceiling of the bridge.
"That's very impressive," murmured Marvin.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[benjfowler]

I recently went to an open day at the Joint European Tours near Oxford the UK. It's the world's biggest fusion reactor currently in service, and one of only a few of it's kind that can run on a mix of deuterium-tritium fuel. It can get highly radioactive, so they use some very impressive robots.

The machines they use are in a class all their own. They're huge, high precision machines that can be used on the outside of the tokamak, suspended from a telescoping boom riding on a gantry, and also has a snake like boom to access the inside of the tokamak. It's got human arm-like end effectors, can carry several tons, and supplies force feedback to the operators. They also have lots of what looks like fancy motion planning software to help out.

However the scientist leading the tour didn't look like the type to suffer fools gladly and got a little testy with me, because they're not actually robots. They're "remote handling systems".. and apparently there's a difference between a 'robot' and a 'remote handling system'. He implied, but didn't actually say that very little work with these machines would be automated (too complicated, robots crashing into stuff left lying around be technicians is apparently a bad thing around anything nuclear.

So there you go: as long as there's always a human in the loop, apparently it isn't a robot.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[iron spartan]

Depends on what you mean by known obstacles. A fixed obstacle, maybe. That would be defined usually as an boundary in the work envelope and some systems can find there own way around them. Material handling systems, like an automated palletizing system, may have a support structure in the work envelope to work around. For the most part, its a good idea to keep the work envelope as free of obstructions as possible.

If its a mobile object, like part of a weld fixture, then no. If you tell the robot to move from point A to point B, it will try to move from point A to point B regardless of what is in the way. Its the programmers job to work the robot around obstacles.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[shervinemami]

It's not like there is an official meaning of the word Robot that has been clearly defined for hundreds of years. Basically if people want to call it a robot then its a robot. I've built both autonomous and human controlled robots before and even if there's no autonomous functionality at all in a robot, it can still have a lot of similar problems to autonomous robots, which is why its generally classified as a robot, as opposed to "machine" or "remotely operated vehicle".

I mean you wouldn't call a computer printer a robot, even though it has a level of autonomy and motors and sensors and feedback loops and embedded processor, but if it was in a factory and was 10 times larger and had a plastic cutting tool instead of a ink dropping tool, then some people would call it a factory robot.

Re:Same platform different end-effectors

[Anne Thwacks]

I don't think the public, at least in the US, would be willing to accept a robot that could actually make its own decisions.

Hold it right there, cowboy ... You elected Reagan and at least one of the two Bushes?

Reverse the polarity!

[Chris Burke]

Now all they have to do is make sure they don't flip the switch on the robots' backs from "fight" to "cause".

The obligatory

[PhunkySchtuff]

I, for one, welcome our new Robotic Firefighting Overlords...

How often does this happen?

[HangingChad]

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.

Apparently there are a lot of rogue acetylene canisters catching fire in London on a regular basis. I weld as a hobby and in all the welding shops I've been in, in all the classes, I've never seen an acetylene tank go off. And with all the welders I've ever met in all those places, maybe one has ever seen a tank go off. Is it something with your gauges over there? The tank construction? Seems to happen a lot more there than it does here.

Acetylene is nothing you want to dick with. If it gets away from you, then I'd sure want a robot going in to deal with it.

Re:How often does this happen?

[petermgreen]

It's not that the containers cause fires (though I would guess the welding torches fed from them do from time to time), it's that properties catch fire for a whole number of reasons and those properties sometimes contain gas cylinders (of which acetelene is the nastiest common one but even things like butane and propane can be pretty nasty). Furthermore until the fire brigade can contact the owner they often don't know if cylinders are present and if so what they contain.

Re:How often does this happen?

[TapeCutter]

"I weld as a hobby and in all the welding shops I've been in, in all the classes, I've never seen an acetylene tank go off. And with all the welders I've ever met in all those places, maybe one has ever seen a tank go off. Is it something with your gauges over there? The tank construction? Seems to happen a lot more there than it does here."

I own a fridge, most people I know own or use a fridge, in the last 50yrs I have only ever seen one fridge explode and that was in a house fire. The firefighters at that fire told me exploding fridges are a common occurance, but what the hell do they know?

I remember reading about a DIY version

[Trepidity]

This sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it; thanks to Google Books I'm remembering a pretty cool section in Robot Builder's Bonanza on DIY robot firefighters, building up simple circuits to ever more capable, fire-detection systems, control schemes, and automatically controlled extinguishing apparatus.

Obviously not quite the same thing, but it was pretty cool when I read it, and so I'm taking this opportunity to plug the awesomeness of building DIY firefighting robots. =]