This robotic hose-dragon jets its way into burning buildings
This dragon breathes water. Image: TechCrunch
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:
Emerging Technologies
While hose-toting drones may be a fantasy, hose-powered robo-dragons (or robotic hose-dragons — however you like it) are very much a reality. This strange but potentially useful robot from Japanese researchers could snake into the windows of burning buildings, blasting everything around it with the powerful jets of water it uses to maneuver itself.
Yes, it’s a real thing: Created by Tohoku University and Hachinohe College, the DragonFireFighter was presented last month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
It works on the same principle your hose does when you turn it on and it starts flapping around everywhere. Essentially your hose is acting as a simple jet: the force of the water being blasted out pushes the hose itself in the opposite direction. So what if the hose had several nozzles, pointing in several directions, that could be opened and closed independently?
Well, you’d have a robotic hose-dragon. And we do.
The DragonFireFighter has a nozzle-covered sort of “head” and what can only be called a “neck.” The water pressure from the hose is diverted into numerous outlets on both in order to create a stable position that can be adjusted more or less at will.
It requires a bit of human intervention to go forwards, but, as you can see, several jets are pushing it that direction already, presumably at this point for stability and rigidity purposes. If the operators had a little more line to give it, it seems to me it could zoom out quite a bit farther than where it was permitted to in the video.
For now it may be more effective to just direct all that water pressure into the window, but one can certainly imagine situations where something like this would be useful.
DragonFireFighter was also displayed at the International Fire and Disaster Prevention Exhibition in Tokyo.
One last thing. I really have to give credit where credit’s due: I couldn’t possibly outdo IEEE Spectrum’s headline, “Firefighting Robot Snake Flies on Jets of Water.”
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
The Agenda Weekly
A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.
More on Emerging TechnologiesSee all
Ella Yutong Lin and Kate Whiting
April 23, 2024
Andre S. Yoon and Kyoung Yeon Kim
April 23, 2024
Simon Torkington
April 23, 2024
Thong Nguyen
April 23, 2024
Kalin Anev Janse and José Parra Moyano
April 22, 2024
Sebastian Buckup
April 19, 2024