Fire-fighting robot consortium founded

The European Commission has formed a consortium of specialists from universities, robotics companies and a British fire and rescue service to develop robots to help in emergencies.

The project (The Engineer, 19 January 2007), which goes under the name of Guardians, will last three years and has a budget of €2.7m. Universities and companies from Germany, Spain, the UK, Belgium, Portugal and Turkey will participate.

Guardians are a swarm of autonomous robots applied to navigate and search in potentially dangerous urban ground. This may be a building full of smoke or an industrial warehouse where toxic substances have been released. Under these circumstances, where the risks fire-fighters face on entering the building are unknown, the guardian robots will act as a reconnaissance party capable of collecting data and forwarding them to a control station. With this information, fire-fighters will be able to assess potential danger and decide on the best strategy to be followed to tackle the problem.