A first: Engineering students design firefighting humanoid robot
done,” John Seminatore of Irvington, New York, a master’s student in mechanical engineering, said at the demo’s conclusion.
The release notes that students spent many hours aboard the ship prepping for the demo and hundreds of hours before that in their Goodwin Hall lab designing, fabricating, and testing SAFFiR. Unlike movies with CGI gimmickry to make robots appear to move, getting a real robot to walk upright is a challenge.
The Shadwell created extra obstacles: Heat from previous test fires has buckled its floors. In the hallway where SAFFiR walked, the floor slanted away from the path the robot has to take.
SAFFiR is, of course, a prototype, and the day of robot firefighters is long off. It is user-operated now, but long-range plans are for the robot to operate autonomously. Even with added intelligence to SAFFiR, it will take remote instruction from sailors and firefighters with safety as key.
“These robots can work closely with human firefighters without firefighters being directly exposed to steam or heat, fire and smoke,” Thomas McKenna, a program manager with the Office of Naval Research, said at the demo. Robots may one day patrol ships, he said, scanning for unnatural heat, smoke, or other issues and providing a “constant watch” against onboard dangers not detected by sailors.
The robot’s presence will be welcome. “Have you ever been on a ship that’s on fire? It’s terrifying,” said Dominique Pineiro, a Navy veteran on the Shadwell during the demo.
“That’s a fact.”
SAFFiR team members and the Navy unveiled the robot on 4 February, to media and the public at the Naval Future Force Science & Technology EXPO in Washington, D.C.
Future incarnations of SAFFiR already are planned with the Navy, according to Lattimer, with upgrades including improved movement. Funding from the Navy stands at $4.5 million and could increase as the project continues.
Days before the Expo, Seminatore — the SAFFiR student project manager at TREC — looked back on the demo of SAFFiR with relief and pride.
“We have demonstrated a real world application for humanoid robots that no one has done before,” said Seminatore, an Air Force veteran. “Manipulating an empty hose or walking down a hallway is very different than operating in a heat-warped soot filled corridor dragging a hose filled with water. It was a tense month leading up to the demo, we had never seen where we were testing, never used a real hose, never actually sprayed water. … The team did great and the robot performed like a champ.”
