The Ole Mechanical Robot Fire Extinguisher

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Jamie Slaughter, with 10228 views

Forest fires are a major destructive natural disaster, which can spiral out of control and potentially lead to enormous amounts of damage, in terms of money and more importantly lives. Due to the scale of such fires, it is difficult to stop them once they begin, as they grow stronger and increasingly more intensive as the fire's rage progresses.

Therefore it makes sense to try and prevent the fire ever initiating in the first place. Despite this line of thinking, fires are so sporadic that preventing them starting is easier said than done, which many fire brigades can testify to. People are simply not up to this essential task and Magdeburg-Stendal FH have realized this, as they have developed a robot prototype to combat the afore-mentioned problems.

The robot resembles a beetle shape and its primary duty is to travel across difficult terrain, achievable thanks to six flexible legs which make movement much less restrictive, and act upon any areas which it views as dangerous. The robot, named the OLE, is expected to alleviate humans from a dangerous task, in a bid to save lives and avoid tragedies from ever instigating.

The OLE was introduced to extinguish fires in their infancy to avert the fire escalating into a full scale forest fire. The OLE is essentially a monitoring tool which scours a specified area searching for signs of heat, and proceeding to douse the flames. This searching capability is possible due to the infrared and bio-sensors incorporated into the robot. Whenever a possible danger is established, the robot sends a report back to the local fire department, whilst it attempts to control the situation.

Furthermore, the OLE transforms into a small ball, made entirely of a heat resistant exterior which can endure temperatures up to 1300 degrees centigrade, whenever excessive danger is encountered, and avoiding damage to the robot mechanism.

The OLE, much like a beetle, possesses two antennas at the front to improve the robot's navigation skills. The speed of the robot, on average terrain, is 10 to 20kmh so to further improve protection, multiple robots can be utilized within any given area.

The robot sounds like a great innovation to prevent tragedy in as safe a manner as possible. The robots appear highly efficient which leads us to believe that they will extinguish fire fears within susceptible areas.