This week, the US Office of Naval Research released details regarding a demo of its Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR)
conducted last November. The robot, as its name implies, is designed to
help human crews fight fires in the close confines of naval vessels. In
order to get to those fires quicker, SAFFiR may ultimately receive some
help itself from an autonomous drone, that was also part of the
demonstration.
Referred to as a "micro-flyer," the quadcopter was developed by
researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and
spin-off company Sensible Machines. Both it and the robot are components
of the Office of Naval Research's Damage Control Technologies for the
21st Century (DC-21) project.
The idea is that the drone will be released into a ship's potentially
dark, smoke-filled hallways in the event of an emergency and will
proceed to autonomously fly through the vessel, looking for fires. When
it spots one, it will transmit its location to SAFFiR, letting the robot
know where to go.
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