Video: The Navy's 'Shoulder-to-Shoulder' Firefighting Robot's First Trial By Fire

LOL! is this serious?

Looks great lets get rid of all the wall mounted fire extinguishers...this is clearly better

As a prototype, I think this is great to send a robot into harms way, where a human should not go. This be great in Japan for nuclear waste clean up in the future.

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Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

Why do we want to humanize robots so much? Is it for Aesthetics or do they hope that facial expressions will make human-robot interaction easier?

Why do the USA robots scare me and the Japanese robots I want to take home and introduce to the family?

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Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

Yeah, I get it that this thing's new, but it looks like it would be much more apt starting fires than putting them out. The Navy should be quite pissed right now. Whatever this is intended to be; it is NOT that thing. Whatever this is intended to be, it was nowhere near prepared for a demonstration for the public consumption. I can imagine submariners' mothers and wives and childrens reaction to seeing this. I hope the Navy has removed someone's ass in a proper military fashion, because this is lame. Once again, if this has costed us what it typically does for one of these scam projects, THEN ALL THE WORLD IS IN THE WRONG TRADE.

You wanna fight fire on a modern seagoing craft in a comprehensive way you gotta look environmentally in a dynamic sense. You want a robot? Why can't it, for the cash they'll cost us, cycle the flame environment right out of the space it's living in? Isn't that the easiest way to fight a fire? It's not like we don't have these capabilities that we look for in other areas already, like vacuum as an initiator for the hot gas cycler. Hell; we can generate power from it. Get Real, Navy. Some of us have family that serve.

Smell that boys? That's tax dollars burning.

aw geeze that is terrible, they need to do something about that face really, i mean it looks like she's a crack addict trying to stop a fire in a crack house. and the water system? it works worse than a limp ****.
to mars or bust!

Dear Fellow Readers,

I see alot of negativity in the comment list about the fire fighting robot.

Please keep in mind that this is a prototype and refinement comes with practice. This is cutting edge stuff…is there any other group with a better one to offer?

What about the successes of the robot? It was able to communicate with the human partner and understand the task and accomplish the mission. Granted it took a bit of time and was done in a manner that was not really a natural conversation but there was communication and understanding. Now let the software developers work at refining this. Also, such human- robot interaction has application in fields other than fire fighting as the technology develops.

Every new invention has to go through its development phase. On the following website is a picture of Henry Fords first automobile…it is chain driven with bicycle tires and you steer it with a tiller.

www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/showroom/1896/quad.html

I think we can all agree that this prototype was developed into something that has made one of the greatest impacts on society of all times. However, in its humble beginnings, it does not look to be society changing instrument that it grew into.

I said something nice and refered to it as a prototype. I will wrap my robotic arms around myself and give a Big big hug for me, aaaaaa....!
LOL!

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Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

That face will scarce me for life.

Anyway, I think we a long way from replacing firefighters with robots.

Get serious no wheeled robot is going to be worth a damn in fighting fires in the real world. That's take arms (for climbing) and legs (for stepping over debris). What a joke. A better robot would look more like a spider--able to grab and go anywhere. Until then, stop reporting on stupid stuff like this.

I like to see the development of a robotic type vehicle that can get a chemical dispersant on a chemical type fire, no human wishes to get near. Or robotic eyes that can see closely a nuclear accident and perhaps collect nuclear material that no human wishes to get near.

Of course a great many fires when they first occur are so violent in nature, it would just blow away a human and robot in the situation and it seems only a human is adaptable to fight it and they often get hurt or die trying.

I am all for any type of tool that helps a fire fighter and helps them to be safer and contain the problem at hand.

Some fires, chemical spills or nuclear accidents take years to clean up. A robot could be very helpful in this type of situation.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

You can't get that sort of junk in a real ship. You can't get it to work under mass conflag either. Decks would be buckled, open, matter all over the place, wires dropping, spaces flooded. Stupid waste of money.

Train sailors with that money.

@ matsci1 ; The problem is that you could put a lever-driven regular fire extinguisher on Henry Ford's first auto, and it would have beat this putting out that wisp of fire. The point is that the thing they're pushing here is supposed to be SOMEthing resembling robust; if our sailors are going to be 'shoulder to shoulder' and depending on this piece of junk's next generation to save a ship or sub. You can teach that little pile of junk for the next ten years, but in a real emergency situation; where things are really taking damage and the crisis is borderline on getting out of control, this would still be more in the way than useful.

Mr Quasi

I agree that the robot is not that manoeuvrable and a wheeled base for mobility is not a good choice in an environment that needs damage control.

However, look at this article about the PETMAN robot from Boston Dynamics that is also on the Popular Science webpage

//www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/darpa-wants-humanoid-robots-can-drive-tractors-open-doors-and-save-day

This is getting more like what would be needed as far as mobility and the ability to keep balance in a difficult situation.

My suggestion would be to keep developing the software and the sensors necessary to understand the human partner and accomplish the mission on the Octavia model and then incorporate those into the chassis developed by Boston Dynamics.

@ matsci1; Yeah, I watch a lot of the published development and often see integration possibilities with things that others are doing, but it rarely happens in our world of structured grants. From what I can tell, we are still years away from a ship based firefighter that is worth calling a 'shoulder to shoulder' response robot. Something that is not just in the way when the tish hits the fan.