A German industrial design studio, apparently with no expertise in wildland fire, has developed a concept for a robot that would be pre-positioned in the wildland. When it’s sensors detect a fire from up to 1/2 mile away, it would wake up, extend it’s 6 legs, walk to the fire, and put it out using tanks of water and powdered fire-extinguishing agents.
Unless a fire is very small, it can take shit-loads of water to put one out, so unless these robots are going to carry 500-1,000 gallons of water, or unless there are going to be shit-loads of robots, your job is pretty secure. Oh… and the cost of each one is estimated at $125,000-$200,000.
The article at Popsci.com says the weight of the robots will be 150-200 pounds, which means they could hold about 5-15 gallons of water, depending on how much other fire extinguishing agent they carry.
Photo from Popsci.com
