Anna Konda, the Robotic Firefighter

Roland Piquepaille writes "In fact, Anna Konda is a robotic fire hose moving like a snake. This robot, which has been developed in Norway by SINTEF, is 3 m long and weighs 70 kg. The snake contains 20 water hydraulic motors that move the robotic joints. And the energy needed to power these motors comes from water pressurized to 100 bars and already available inside the fire hose. This gives enough energy to this water-powered robot to climb up stairs, to lift a car up off the ground or even break through a wall. Very clever design! The designers think that this robot could not only replace humans to fight fires when it's too dangerous for them, but could also be used for subsea operations or explosion prevention. An additional overview contains more details and pictures of this snake robot."

Movement

[Instine]

Is there anywere in either artical that says how it moves forwards? I'm currently making a robot snake of my own, and the rectilinear motion is by far the most difficult part of the physical design. I'm assuming it uses wheel, but can tell from the images.

Great stuff. It not entirely new though.

This is my fave out there at the mo. Snake link (click the images for vids) [snakerobots.com]

100 bars?!

[MArainman]

What kind of fire engine puts out 100 bars?? That's 1450 psi! The typical city pumper is designed for 200 psi. Most of the hoses are only rated to a couple hundred. They need to seriously dial down the pressure requirements if this is to be used in any kind of existing firefighting application.

Re:sssss

[Instine]

Urm? Right. Well actually I am making a snake. Its on my desk. I'm using Oopic-r for the brain and building my own desing for the body, curently using 8 servos, 50 universal joints and one range finder. What I hope to do, is solve the rectalinear motion issue by using a derivitive of real snakes own process, which is a longditudinal wave of flexing rib muscles, which creates a "slip and grip" tranfer of force and motion via the belly scales. Though this tends only to be used by larger constrictors.

Try not to make assumptions regarding posts and their posters on the basis of their literacy skills. Ever. It makes you look foolish in the long run.

Of course they get it!

[Anonymous Coward]

The blog of 'Roland' earns them a very tidy sum.

It amazes me that guys like you can't see the obvious: why else would every single submission by 'Roland' get plastered on Slashdot? Why else the earlier submission of the same article (from the original sources, no less) by other submitters is always ignored?

'Roland' is just an extension of Slashdot's marketing machine. How can you imagine otherwise?

Re:And Then Again, Maybe Not

[GTMoogle]

Also, fire fighters generally (I'm guessing) want high pressure and a tight spray so they can hit the base of the fire from a long (safe) distance. This robot could use the water for cooling and stick its nose straight into the fire, and spray from multiple directions at once to cancel most any kick.

Actually, it's going to have to continously spray water just to move, since having a water return line would be a little silly. I'm really curious if the motors are attached in series or parallel - i.e. does each joint spray a little every movement, or does the nose constantly spray to some degree? Too bad there aren't any pictures I can find.

Re:Of course they get it!

[GTMoogle]

I'm not denying there's a conspiracy, but this specifically has been answered before - at the times at which roland submits stories, very few other people are also submitting. I think it was zonk that usually used posted them, which happened because he was the only /. staff working at that time. /. does little editing, which everyone knows, so they don't hunt down the orignal source, they just take what they get. Roland just happens to gank some interesting stuff and probably submits en masse.

The question is, why didn't YOU submit this story first? :) Slashdot doesn't really have much to gain by squelching people who provide good stories, regardless of how much they're gaming the system for their own profit. Roland just happens to be a poor info source, but no one gave a better one or he wouldn't get posted so much.

There's certainly room for improvement, but Cmdr Taco himself pointed out that there's no good reason to assume a conspiracy in this case, just blind chance. (Roland wasn't even in the top 10 of people who got their stories submitted at the time, but everyone noticed because he's one of the more annoying. And some people scream about it, which gets more attention.)

Re:And Then Again, Maybe Not

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Actually, we want low pressure and tight stream... but depending on the tip, higher pressures are needed for proper function.

Presently, there's two popular tip-types - the TFT (taskforce tip) which has an adjustable "spray" pattern, and the smoothbore, which is actually not a tip at all. It's just a pipe.

Arguments over which is better have raged on, forever. In either case, though, the goal is to get gallonage onto the heat source. The theory of water as an extinguising agent is fairly simple - we want to stop the chemical reaction by eliminating Heat from the equation. Water is ideal - to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree celcius, it takes 1 calorie. Great! I've got a fire producing 2000 calories of heat per second. That's gonna take a lot of water to mitigate.

But, there's a trick - we don't want water. We want STEAM. Water needs 1 calorie for that 1 degree, all the way up to 99 degrees. But... to get from 99 to 100 takes... wait for it... 1400 calories. That is a LOT of heat.

Water doesn't put fires out. Water converting to steam does. That ONE degree shift is what fights the fire. Any water that ends up on the floor is a waste of time.

The TFT theory is based on surface area; a bunch of droplets will have more exposed surface area than a cylinder ("straight stream") of water, hence will evaporate faster / have a higher conversion rate.

The smoothbore argument is based on penetration; with a solid ("straight") stream, you know the water is impacting the hot surface pretty hard with some depth of penetration. Since that water will be trapped, its only way "out" is to convert. It has the added advantage of being able to blow holes through things that are in the way... walls, furniture, whatever. Smoothbores are obviously popular with urban companies, like FDNY for example.

The tight-spray actually isn't that relevent to distance; it's all about NOT screwing up the thermal strata in the room. A smoothbore is ideal for a cooker, since there is almost no drag and (therefore) no venturi effect. A TFT, with all of its droplets, has a lot more cross section - but these droplets create a big venturi as they travel through space. The resulting turbulance can suck the hot stuff above into the cool stuff where we are. That's the argument in the US, anyway. The Europeans see it a completely different way... but their building construction is completely different, also.