Dozens of unique firefighters descend on Hartford, Conn., each April to participate in an annual competition that requires them to navigate a maze, find and extinguish a fire.
No, it isn’t the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge: These competitors are small, autonomous robots, each designed specifically for the annual Fire Fighting Home Robot Competition hosted by Trinity College.
“It’s a lot of fun, and we get many, many interesting people,” says contest director and host David J. Ahlgren, the Karl W. Hallden Professor of
Engineering at Trinity College. “This year’s competition was a wonderful contest. Everybody worked very hard, trying to make a robot firefighter
for the world to use.”
Popular Science
The Fire Fighting Home Robot Competition is well known in engineering circles. “This is a very popular contest,” Ahlgren states. “I think it’s because it’s not too easy–the teams are definitely challenged. [The robots] get better every year, so we have to keep changing the rules to make it more challenging.”
In April 2009, more than 100 exotic and often colorful robots (and their designers) came from five countries, 13 states, and communities across Connecticut to compete in the 16th annual event. Participating teams competed in five skill divisions: junior high school, high school, university, expert and “walking.” (There are subsets within each division for teams that use kits to build their robot.)
A team from Misgav High School in Israel was the overall winner in this year’s competition. Ahlgren reports that Chinese and Israeli teams have recently submitted some “very fast” robots.
Over 2 days, each firefighting robot gets three runs through a set course. “None of them have remote controls [or joysticks], which makes them so-called autonomous robots,” Ahlgren explains. “They have to be able to look around and see things with their sensors, and then respond. They may have multiple programs to help them navigate the maze, find the doorway, look for the fire and identify it–there are other bright spots in the maze–and then go and extinguish it.”
The designers of the firefighting robots can choose their own method for extinguishing the fire, which is simply a lit candle. Methods typically include fans, wires, balloons and squirt guns.
“Reliability is the top criterion,” Ahlgren says. “They should be successful at extinguishing the flame on each run. Then we score for speed. We give a prize for the world champion, which is the fastest robot in the entire competition.”
Ahlgren adds that, “Some of these robots cost thousands of dollars; others cost $50–and sometimes a $50 robot will beat all the others. In fact, sometimes a junior high team will beat [professional] engineers.”
The Future of Firefighting?
Although the robots in this contest are admittedly small scale–as is the fire–Ahlgren believes that eventually some type of robot may be able to assist with firefighting efforts in the future.
“I was just reading that in England, they now have small robots that go in and help firefighters,” he points out. “I don’t know if any part of the idea for that came from our contest.” Ahlgren is referring to the London Fire Brigade, which is currently testing the use of four different robots in fires involving acetylene cylinders. The robots can find, test, move and cool dangerously hot cylinders.
But there is plenty of room for additional robot prototypes–especially since Trinity College is planning a more realistic firefighting competition to debut in 2010: “We’re hoping the House on Fire competition will help lead to [a real-world application],” Ahlgren says.
The new competition will take place outdoors, with a very small-scale house, garage and car. Any of the three components may “catch on fire,” and competing autonomous robots must locate the fire, navigate to a nearby swimming pool and suck up water, then use that to extinguish the fire.
“We had a demonstration of this outdoor competition this year, and I hope that people will sign up to compete [in 2010],” Ahlgren says.
Keep an eye on the games at Trinity College. Some of the innovative, effective robots designed by engineers and students for fun and competition may be the prototypes for future “robo-firefighters” for your department.
