WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- At the Naval Future Force Science & Technology Expo, held Wednesday and Thursday in Washington, D.C., military engineers showed off their latest invention -- a firefighting robot.
Researchers at the expo shared details of latest testing milestones reached by the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR). The successes were achieved during trial runs aboard the ex-USS Shadwell, a decommissioned ship now docked in Mobile, Ala., that the Navy uses for research.
A fire in close quarters aboard a submarine or ship far from land is a nightmare scenario. It's one of the most difficult situations for humans to combat, which is why the latest efforts by SAFFiR and its developers have Navy personnel so excited.
"The objectives for the demo on the Shadwell were to show that the robot could walk over a very uneven floor, that it could orient itself to the fire, that it could autonomously handle the hose, operate the hose, aim the hose and suppress the fire, which it succeeded in," Navy scientist Tom McKenna explained in demo video showcasing SAFFiR's newly acquired skills.
McKenna oversees research and development programs in the areas of cognitive neuroscience and human-robot interaction for the Office of Naval Research. SAFFiR was developed in coordination with engineers at Virginia Tech.
A variety of highly sensitive sensors allow the robot to track down a fire source, while infrared stereovision allows it to see through thick smoke.
"We can identify the fire and locate its extent. We can measure the temperature field with thermal imaging and extract [a sense of where] flame is from that. We can also sense flames that are outside the visual field by reflections," McKenna told military news site Defense One.
On top of all that, SAFFiR is autonomous, capable of finding and putting out a fire without human help.
"The robot has the ability to do autonomous tasks, but we have a human in the loop to allow an operator to intervene in any type of task that the robot's doing," said Brian Lattimer, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech.
But while SAFFiR could potentially find and put out a fire in the middle of the night before Navy officers even realized what's happened, McKenna says he thinks of the robot as a partner more than a substitute.
"We're working toward human-robot teams," he said. "It's what we call the hybrid force: humans and robots working together."
