Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: FIREFIGHTING ROBOTS

by Hazed

A team of fire-droids has been demonstated in London by defence contractor QinetiQ. The demo showed four robots intended to tackle the particular risk of fires involving cylinders of acetylene, a common industrial gas.

The robots, which have different skills, from a nimble stair-climber to a diesel-powered robot with a large claw, have been on trial for a year, on call together with their operators for incidents happening in London and southeast England. So far in 2009 they have been called out to 10 incidents.

Acetylene gas is a particular problem for emergency services when a fire is suspected to involve cylinders of the gas because when subjected to heat, they can explode even after the fire has been extinguished, which puts the emergency responders and the public in danger.

The usual procedure with a fire which involves acetylene is to cordon off an area of 200m around it for 24 hours. This can involve closing down roads and rail services and evacuating residents. It's all very disruptive. Gary Gunyon from the London Fire Brigade explained, "In the last five years we've had 471 cylinder incidents in London, 91 of which involved 128 acetylene cylinders. We've had tremendous results with the robots in London. They used to take more than 24 hours to resolve, now we get them resolved in under three hours."

The project has been jointly set up by the London Fire Brigade, Network Rail, the Highways Agency and Transport for London.

For more details, including a rundown of the robot team members and a video, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8172739.stm.

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