Slashdot Mirror
Robot Firefighter To Throw Extinguisher Grenades
S810 writes "Discovery News is running an article about the U.S. Navy developing a robot capable of 'throwing extinguisher grenades.' From the article: 'SAFFiR would need finger and hand coordination to wrestle fire hoses into place or accurately throw extinguisher grenades. It similarly would need the sure-footed balance of a veteran sailor's sea legs to confidently walk the wave-tossed decks of warships. An infrared camera could allow such a robot to see through smoke-filled hallways, and perhaps it could detect the location of fires through gas sensors. The robot's battery is intended to pack enough energy for half an hour of firefighting action.'"
I want to see a warship manned with robots like that. Can you imagine how intimidating that would be, to see that in your scope? Send up the periscope, and all these robot heads swivel around to look directly at you.
maybe it's time for Bigdog to get his sea-...arms?
"The robot's battery is intended to pack enough energy for half an hour of firefighting action." ... and then it explodes releasing toxic chemicals everywhere.
I'm curious about how the public would really react to robots like this doing dangerous jobs - be it rescue robots, firefighting robots, or even the recently hotly-discussed automated (self-driving) cars. The first time one of these robots slips up and someone dies (or is left to die), public outcry will be swift and harsh.
Nothing is more dangerous than a programmer with a screwdriver.
My wife has been throwing wet blankets on everything for years.
Yep, I bet nobody designing and building a robot to fight fires would have considered the impact of heat on the battery pack.
Because "high temperatures" wouldn't be part of the intended operating environment. At all.
Once again, an armchair Slashdotter proves more intelligent than dozens of scientists and engineers who, of course, never would have thought of this as a potential concern or operating constraint!
That could make a great band name...
OK, I admit I have zero experience with fighting fires on ships ... But wouldn't you want a larger battery life in case it's a stubborn fire?
I would think the last thing you'd want is all of the robots winding down just before the fire is out.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Of course they did, but assuming they did removes the humor. :) Not everything should be serious.
- non-lethal crowd control: tear gas grenade
- parties (or impromptu parades): confetti grenade
- stock market crashes/rises: ticker-tape grenade
- religious ceremonies: dove of peace grenade
- political conventions: t-shirt prize grenade
- insurrection (regular explodey grenade)
Why do I feel like every year we come closer to Sky Net being a reality.
Replace that extinguisher grenades with grenades, TnT or anything explosive and voila, you got terminator version .01 alpha. Sorry had to say that lol
I see this robot being misused to start a water balloon war on ship in the middle of the night.
It's all well and good to have an automated firefighter unit, but doesn't it make more sense to simply have better systems that are more passive?
Couldn't you just have a robotic arm that's tied into the flame retardant system attached to the ceiling in important or dangerous rooms? Make it smart enough to detect fire, take aim, and spray it with a flame retardant. I'm sort of imagining the robot in the recent Iron Man films that does something similar. Seems like that could be done without the need for battery packs and ambulation, and not only would it be more ubiquitous, it'd be able to respond a hell of a lot faster than something that's traveling on foot throughout the ship, which would mean less time for the fire to cause damage.
Granted, you can't just drop the sort of thing I'm talking about into a ship, since you'd need to pipe flame retardant into a few places it isn't already, but the cost of one of these ambulatory robotic firefighters has got to be ridiculous (assuming the R&D pans out anytime soon), so I wonder at what point it's more cost effective to just do something simpler with technology that we already have.
If you can make a robot to do all of those things while moving fast on a rolling ship, then you're pretty much in the world of tomorrow. If this is the focus of only a small group, I have to wonder if they've considered the scope of what they are trying to do.
There are too many varibles in firefighting, it is my specialty and sadly we don't have the technology to replace us in the firefighting capacity. I can say this quite easily since over 90% calls are medical calls you go on as a firefighter, but there are a lot of other specialty things we do. Hazmat, rescues, vehicle extrication, etc, the actual fighting fires part is a such a small part of the job. And it's not like what you see on TV, you can't see whats in front of you, the floor may be weakened so you have to ensure it's stable underneath you before you take ever crawl forward. And with fires they are burning hotter and more toxic than ever before with how much synthetic materials we are using and how good the insulation in current structures are. This is to list a few of the MANY dangers.
One of the things i see wrong with the design of the bot for this application is that it won't be good for much besides guiding it in already "safe" fires with no rescues, as you won't have any real feedback like you do in real life to know when to get out, all you might have is a monitor with sensors which will hopefully pick up something. And with the humanoid form it's not the most practical thing to have because heat rises, so it may be 200degrees close to the floor but at shoulder height it may be 700. So the bot would take excessive heat unless they built it to crawl on it's hands and knees like were trained to, in which case it should have been built differently to be more effecient. And lastly if they are using the same kind of "extinquisher grenades" I read about those are a bit interesting, last time i looked into that kind of thing it was just coming out and it works by stopping the chemical chain reaction of the fire, instead of displacing the O2, cooling it down, or removing the fuel (just listed fire tetrahedron in case you are interested).
Gives a whole new definition to yelling out "FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!" when this thing shoots!
Practice Static Safety - Hack Naked
Having been in the Navy for 14 years and forgetting the ship-board obstacles such as steep ladders, water-tight doors with their high step-over and the like, imagine the Navy red tape involved in:
I really cannot see this would be any help at all in a fire situation. Fires do not wait for robots. They are fast and furious. The fire drill is one of the most intense things that happens on a ship. There is no way that robot twiddle dum would get there on time with the robot operator having to maneuver it from cargo hold #3 to the engine room.... the ship could have been toast by that time.
Extinguisher Grenades dot tumblr dot com
If you're making a robot to do some task, why over-complicate it? Traditional grenade launchers are just a tube and a trigger, they make special grenades to fit in it. Whats the problem with fitting fire hoses with some kind of socket or just fit the robot with a clamp that fits the existing hoses?
Why am I thinking of the Holy Hand Grenade Monty Python quote, only slightly re-worded?
And the Robot Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Extinguisher Grenade of Antioch towards thy fiery foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall be snuffed.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Not only be the robot of tomorrow to able to replace humans in a lot of vocations, but doing that while resisting several hundred degrees C. I'm feeling this is a pet project or pipe dream.
As a former volunteer firefighter if my old team gets a hold of anything that throws any kind of grenade, then no one will be able to light up a cigarette in the privacy of their own home without worrying about a fire grenade coming through the window.
On a practical level the fire robot would have to be able to squeeze through narrow spaces, over furniture, and around debris. I can't think of many household fires I was in where a robot would have been much help. It would have fallen through the floor at a kitchen fire that burned through the floorboards, we had to crawl across the couch to get to the hallway. I can't see how a robot could do that. Not only would it have to manage stairs, it would have to be able to bound up stairs dragging a hose line.
There's also deployment time. When the truck rolls up to a scene, we're ready to go in a few seconds after our boots hit the ground. I don't know how you could unpack a robot, boot it up and get it to the structure any faster than the entry and back up teams could pull the pre-connects. Might be handy in a brush fire, but again the terrain would be an issue.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
As opposed to a human firefighter, who merely smells nasty when burning...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It's not going to have battery pack. It takes heat from the environment and convert it to energy to power itself. It powers down when the fire is out and no more energy left to consume.
Dunno... The amount of water going through a firefighting hose operating at 100PSI has more than enough mass flow to power a turbine which could keep a robot going easily. That would knock out the half-hour problem. Of course this would require a hose coupling directly to such a robot.
Yet I wouldn't drop the battery from the design completely though, something happens to the line pressure or needing to move the robot when not actively firefighting you're going to need backup power to maintain mobility.
Heat shouldn't be too much of a problem either. Instead of having the robot hold the firefighting hose, but rather coupled to it - that water could flow through a heatsink. That robot could easily go where people couldn't in regards to temperatures. Any suit which could provide the same heat exchange capability for a human would simply be too cumbersome to be of use.
If such a system were implemented, I'd also consider re-designing the regular firefighting nozzle such that the robot-coupling attaches to the spray end of it. That way if something happens to the robot, you just pull-back the valve handle to cut flow, do whatever to release the nozzle, and you've got the nozzle in your hand ready to go in order to keep fighting the fire.
No, I'm not an engineer, but I'm sure anybody DARPA can hire can make sense of what I just said and work with it.
Although, honestly, if they want to kill you, they've got much better stuff to do that job, but still, seems to me that in a pinch, an "extinguisher" grenade could still potentially be lethal, by sucking all the O2 out of the air in a closed space, for example?
Once again, an armchair Slashdotter proves more intelligent than dozens of scientists and engineers who, of course, never would have thought of this as a potential concern or operating constraint!
The joke is on you. This "fighting fires" with grenades sounds too good to be true. The real end goal is more likely to be about dropping robots behind enemy lines and have them throw grenades which are meant to kill people. In that regard, having the battery explode releasing toxic chemicals everywhere may just be icing on the cake for its original designers.
are lasers, Chuck Norris, and a transforming robo-dog buddy and this will be the single most awesomest thing ever!
That robot is clearly Titan tech :))
1. Wait for government refinement, speculation, manufacturing, and development 2. Becomes unclassified. 3. Blueprints available on the Internetz 4. Re purpose into a sexbot 5. Profit!!!!!
Meanwhile, the millions of LEDs covering its body will provide mood lighting for everyone in the vicinity.
Don't be too sure about the "fire fighting with grenades sounds too good to be true". We already have them:
http://www.statx.com/First_Responder.asp
Chris Knight is my hero.