Using Robots as Fire-fighting Agents

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Using Robots as Fire-fighting Agents

• Anindita Das
• Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• University of Texas at Austin
• dasanuiit_at_gmail.com

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Motivation
Fire-fighting is a critical operation that
currently needs to be performed regularly by
humans.

• Even small fires can become serious without
  timely detection.
• Once a fire breaks out, it is always an emergency
  that must be addressed immediately.
• We lose several human lives each year in fire
  fighting activity.

As autonomous mobile agents become more and more
sophisticated, can we delegate the
responsibility of such critical, life-threatening
operations to these agents?
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An Envisioned Future
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An Envisioned Future
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An Envisioned Future
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The Project
The project is intended as a proof of concept to
investigate if such a vision can be realized.
Some key simplifications

• Single robot Jeeves
• Three sensors with pre-assigned locations
• Centralized communication of sensors
• Fire simulated by light intensity
• No intermediate obstacle
• Only one fire at a time

Jeeves
Also, Jeeves does not have arms and therefore
cannot pour water on the fire!
The focus is on the coordination between fire
sensing and fire fighting mechanisms.
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The Implementation
If light intensity from some sunspot is higher
than a (pre-assigned) threshold then fire is
assumed to have occurred, and Jeeves is notified.
Sunspots (continuously) send light intensity data
to the laptop through base station. Initially
Jeeves is in home location.
Jeeves checks periodically for light intensity
data from affected Sunspot to see if the fire is
extinguished.
Jeeves moves to the (pre-assigned) location of
the affected Sunspot and purportedly attempts to
extinguish fire (at least it says so).
If no fire is received for a number of
consecutive checks then crisis is assumed to be
over.
Jeeves returns to its home and awaits next
notification.
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A Demo
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Conclusion
Fire fighting and similar critical activities cry
out for automation through coordinating mobile
agents.
If we have a problem involving

• a requirement to sense some attribute from the
  physical world
• critical but somewhat routine action in response
  to the sensory data
• which in turn can be extremely expensive or
  life-threatening

then such a problem naturally lends itself to a
solution involving sensor networks for sensing
the attribute and mobile agents for taking the
action.
My experience suggests that developing such
solutions is within the realm of possibility.
Possible future work

• Extend the system into a more realistic one
  (multiple robots, better fire sensing)
• Consider other potential domains where similar
  solutions are admissible.

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Thank You
Questions?
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Related Work
Fire detection through sensor networks

• Fire detection has been one of the earliest
  critical applications of sensor networks
• Work mostly focused on reduction of false alarms
• Yu et al. (2005) discuss techniques for
  detecting forest fire (accounts for humidity,
  wind, etc.)
• Bernardo et al. (2007) consider fire detection
  when sensors themselves can be destroyed.
• Xu et al. (2007) develop techniques for fire
  detection in ancient buildings.

Fire fighting robots

• There is an international fire-fighting robot
  contest.
• Most work focused on guiding robot through fire
  and obstacles.
• Bradshaw (1991) present a robot design as part
  of a surveillance system.
• Park et al. (2010) consider image communication
  between robot and control.
• Chien et al. (2007) consider a fire-fighting
  robot as part of an intelligent building.

To our knowledge not much work has been done in
coordinating fire detection with fire fighting
activities.