Every year, firefighters die fighting fires to save lives, but what if firefighters didn’t have to die to save others? What if we had robotic firefighting equipment that used unmanned ground vehicle technologies – what if we used unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs to put out wildfires to save our trees? We have these technologies now, and it is just a matter of allocating some research and development dollars and making it available.

In a burning building, a robot can go and find people who are trapped or in burning rooms and open up like a pod and the people can get in. The pod would protect him as the building burned around them. If the building collapsed they would be safe inside with oxygen, and all they would have to do is wait until the firefighters in cleanup crew could dig them out later. Each pod would be found quite easily due to a home-tracking device. Robotic tractors could go through the rubble and retrieve the pods.

We already have firefighting aircraft, but what if those aircraft were unmanned aircraft – what difference would it make? It would be safer, and we would not have to risk pilots lives to do the flying and the robots would not get tired. Plus, the unmanned aerial vehicles would be less expensive to manufacture or because they would not have all the pilot controls and it would save a third of the cost.

Additionally, the robotic equipment would perform better, because they didn’t have the weight of the pilots, that means they could take extra firefighting retardant or Phoschek. Let’s use robotic firefighting UGVs and UAVs to put out fires and to save our trees.

By: Lance Winslow

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