Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Building a robot firefighter

Before the year is out, the Navy will start a fire on one of its ships and send in a robot to put it out.

Designed at Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania, the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot, or SAFFiR, is a two-legged machine built to climb stairs and open watertight hatches just like a human. But Dennis Hong, one of SAFFiR’s developers, said the robot is built to withstand flames and smoke that humans might not survive.

Continue reading below

“This is almost science fiction, but it’s real,” Hong said.

Keep reading…

News Timeline



From Our Sponsor