South Korean project aims to develop firefighting robots

SEOUL, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A South Korean consortium is planning to develop a four-legged robot that could help save people from fires and extinguish flames, Rainbow Robotics announced Monday.

With a budget of $13 million and a six-year timeline, the project will bring the country's state-backed agencies and universities together with Rainbow Robotics and the German Aerospace Center.

They plan to develop two types of robot: One will help extinguish fires and the other will be designed to find people caught in a fire.

"The first type of robot will specialize in pinpointing the origin, or the place where the fire started, on its own and try to put it out in the early stages," a Rainbow Robotics representative told UPI News Korea.

"The main task for the second type of robot, to be equipped with cameras and remote-controlled, will be to search for people in danger. Once the person or persons are located, the flesh-and-blood firefighters will take over," he said.

Rainbow Robotics representative surmised that the people-seeking type of robot could eventually become autonomous, as well.

Founded in 2011 by Oh Joon-ho, a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technoloy, and fellow researchers, Rainbow Robotics has developed bipedal and quadruped robots.

Its human-size bipedal robot, named HUBO, received global attention in 2015 when it won the DARPA robotics challenge sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Rainbow Robotics is also working on a government project with the aim of making a quadruped military robot that can detect landmines.

"The prototype for the landmine-detecting robots is expected to be deployed sometime next year," Oh said in a phone interview. "For real-life applications, however, it will take some time."

Samsung Electronics is one of the major shareholders of Rainbow Robotics. Earlier this year, it paid $67 million for a 14.99% stake in the firm.