In a demonstration aboard a former U.S. Navy ship, a small quadrotor developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and spin-off company Sensible Machines flew autonomously through dark, smoke-filled compartments to map fires and locate victims.
Last fall’s demonstration, part of an Office of Naval Research (ONR) project called Damage Control Technologies for the 21st Century (DC-21), showed that a small drone can operate in the confined spaces inside a ship to rapidly gather situational information to guide firefighting and rescue efforts.
“With the micro-flyer, we wanted to show that it could autonomously navigate through the narrow hallways and doors – even in dense fire smoke – and locate fires,” said Thomas McKenna, ONR’s DC-21 program manager. “It succeeded at all those tasks.”
As part of the DC-21 concept, information gathered by the micro-flyer would be relayed to a large humanoid robot, the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR), that would work with human firefighters to suppress fires and evacuate casualties.