Jan 19 2011
Office of Naval Research has sponsored a project to develop a firefighting humanoid and to deploy it in firefighting operations aboard ships. The tenure of the project is three years and approximately $2 million a year will be spent on the new robot.
Firefighting Robot
The robot can walk and talk. It will include sensors and a suppressant for extinguishing fire. It can move on its own throughout the vessel, communicate with people and its microdrones can access locations, which cannot be reached by robots and humans.
Dr. Thomas McKenna, Program Manager at the Office of Naval Research, has stated that Virginia Tech, Penn State and the Naval Research Laboratory are also working on this project.
These robots can substitute several risky operations presently carried out by humans. But like real fire fighting personnel they cannot carry people over their shoulders during such tasks. However they can be deployed to assess casualties.