A group of engineers from the University of California, San Diego’s Coordinated Robotic Labs and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed an autonomous robot designed to assess the structural integrity of burning buildings.
Don’t fear. The Segway-like FFR (which we took to stand for Fire Fighting Robot) is essentially a scout that can be sent into a building to explore and analyse a fire and the building, getting vital information to fire crews before they enter. It’s not set to replace firefighters as we know them, despite the widespread cuts many fire services are facing.
The robot uses infrared cameras to detect thermal information and two stereo RGB cameras to contruct a 3D map of the room. Fire crews can use this map to plan their rescue operations before putting themselves into a dangerous position.
Firefighters already rely on thermal imaging cameras to detect hotspots when they are tackling a fire, but the added value of an internally mapped live image of the incident would be extremely high in complex situations. The really incredible thing about this idea, however, is the fact that the robot is autonomous.
Thomas Bewley, a professor of mechanical engineering at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, said in a press release:
These robot scouts will be small, inexpensive, agile, and autonomous. Firefighters arriving at the scene of a fire have 1000 things to do. To be useful, the robotic scouts need to work like well-trained hunting dogs, dispatching quickly and working together to achieve complex goals while making all necessary low-level decisions themselves along the way to get the job done.
UCSD said the robots are equipped with a “sophisticated on-board software system” that analyses and maps all the data garnered from the sensors. In addition to finding thermal hotspots, the scouts can look for survivors, monitor volatile gases, and alert firefighters if a room may soon collapse.
In June, we reported on a US hotel fire collapse that killed four fire officers, including Anne Sullivan, a 24-year-old probationary firefighter. Of course, it’s impossible to know whether robot scouts such as these could have prevented such an incident.
UCSD said the researchers are looking for funding to further the concept. They expect to present results at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May 2014.
Could a robotic scout firefighter save lives? Let us know in the comments below. Click “Post message” to leave a new comment.
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