Flame Bot: A Portable Robotic Assistant for Firefighters

Out of the countless professions in the world today, firefighting still remains one of the most dangerous.  According to the National Fire Protection Association, 62,085 on-duty firefighter injuries and 69 on-duty deaths occurred in the United States in 2016. 22% of deaths and almost 40% of all firefighter injuries occurred during fire incidents.  Even with technological advancements over the past 20 years, firefighters still continue to get injured or even die while in the line of duty.  While there have been robots developed to assist firefighters in extinguishing fires, most of these products are not easily portable for firefighters to bring to a site in a first-responder vehicle.  In addition, current products do not collect real-time data about their surroundings.  ZMCSolutions developed a prototype of a portable robotic system, Flame Bot, that will allow firefighters to view their surroundings and gather temperature and carbon monoxide levels.  Users will be able to control Flame Bot wirelessly and view live video feed and data collection from the robot through a laptop interface.  Flame Bot is comprised of a Raspberry Pi 3B+, a rechargeable battery, a camera, and temperature and carbon monoxide sensors. Flame Bot is a prototype/proof-of-concept of a robotic assistant for firefighters to further protect them on the job.  Our prototype will not be capable of surviving the high temperatures present in fires, as the focus is to create a portable robotic system capable of collecting and displaying real-time data useful to firefighters. Flame Bot will mainly be focused on hardware integration, but will also have customized programmability for the laptop and robot controls.  In the future, our prototype could be developed with a cooling system, heat-resistant/fireproof material, along with automotive/military grade components to provide a fully functional robotic assistant.