Imagine a flying dragon that doesn’t spout fire, but instead extinguishes it with blasts of water. Thanks to a team of Japanese researchers, this new kind of beast may soon be recruited to firefighter teams around the world, to help put out fires that are too dangerous for their human teammates to approach. The blueprint of this novel firefighter robot, called the Dragon Firefighter, has been published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. And as it has been published as Open Science, roboticists around the world may freely use the plans to build their own Dragon Firefighters, for the benefit of all. “We here present a prototype of a four-meter-long, remotely controllable flying firehose robot, engineered to safely and efficiently extinguish fires in buildings by directly approaching the fire sources,” said joint corresponding author Dr. Yuichi Ambe, an assistant professor at Osaka University. A research team from Prof Satoshi Tadokoro’s laboratory at Tohoku University began working on similar flying robots in 2016. Since then, 11 researchers and students have contributed to its further development. Prior and during development, they liaised with Japanese firefighters to better understand their needs. The Dragon Firefighter’s firehose is propelled upward (flying at two meters above the ground) by eight controllable jets of water spouting from its center and head. The firehose can change shape and be oriented towards flames, steered by a control unit in a wheeled cart behind. The cart is connected through a supply tube to a fire truck with a water reservoir of 14,000 liters.
Full report : Scientists develop ‘flying dragon’ robot to fight fires from a distance.
