Robot built by Virginia Tech students gives peek into future of firefighting

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Robot built by Virginia Tech students gives peek into future of firefighting

Posted: Friday, February 6, 2015 8:00 am
By Yann Ranaivo [e-mail] 381-1661

Kind of like Victor Frankenstein when the monster came to life, all the frustrations that plagued some Virginia Tech students were eased one day in November when they saw their metallic creation walk down the sweltering hallway of a naval ship to put out a fire.
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“It’s amazing. You sometimes get a little jaded and the robot is a source of frustration,” said Seminatore, who’s completing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. “Then you come to the place like the expo I’m at, and you get to show it off and you realize you’re doing something no one else has ever done.”

SAFFiR — Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot — is a humanoid robot standing 5-foot-10 that the students built to help fight ship fires. ... The robot is among three human-size models that Virginia Tech faculty and students have designed during the past few years. The three, one of which will be unveiled later this year, possess arms, legs, hands, feet and torsos and are intended to perform basic human functions.

SAFFiR was demonstrated aboard the decommissioned ex-USS Shadwell in Mobile, Alabama, in November, but was announced to the greater public this week when the students displayed the robot during an expo in Washington, D.C., that was attended by U.S. Navy officials, among others.



The robot SAFFiR is intended to help fight fires.

Photo courtesy of Virginia Tech

ETA:

Firefighting Robots Could Help US Navy Snuff Out Fires at Sea

by Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer | February 06, 2015 06:16am ET
@techEpalermo.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Hose-wielding humanoid robots could one day keep Navy firefighters out of harm's way.

A prototype of an adult-size firefighting bot was unveiled this week at the Naval Future Force Science and Technology Expo in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the exposition was the perfect place to show off a futuristic robot equipped to fight fires at sea.



The SAFFiR (short for Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot) humanoid bot was developed to one day help put out fires aboard U.S. Navy ships.