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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.'"
Now all they have to do is make sure they don't flip the switch on the robots' backs from "fight" to "cause".
The enemies of Democracy are
(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!
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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
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." ..." said the machine, vibrating with unaccustomed thought, "laser beams?" ... how about an electron ram?"
"Errmmm
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
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. ..." ..." it tailed off into thought again.
"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
"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.
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.
Hold it right there, cowboy ... You elected Reagan and at least one of the two Bushes?
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