Only 2 Seconds to Extinguish Fire... University Student Invents 'Self-Firefighting Robot'

Pukyong National University Team Wins 'Grand Prize' at Busan LINC+ Joint Capstone Design Competition

Students from Pukyong National University developed an autonomous fire-fighting robot that is spraying water toward the flames.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] The robot, which had memorized 20,000 fire scene photos, extinguished the fire within 2 seconds of ignition.

A robot invention that immediately recognizes a fire when it occurs and directly sprays water to put out the fire has been developed. It is a creation made by university students.

Seven students from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of IT Convergence Applied Engineering at Pukyong National University (President Jang Young-su) have attracted attention by developing an ‘Autonomous Firefighting Robot’.

The Pukyong National University ‘Hot Shot’ team (student leader Kim Myung-jin, supervising professor Park Young-hwan) won the grand prize with this smart robot at the ‘2020 Busan Region LINC+ Project Joint Capstone Design Competition’ held on January 29.

This work, which combined functions such as deep learning, stereo vision, and autonomous driving to enable simultaneous fire detection and extinguishing, received the highest evaluation among 15 universities in the Busan area participating in this competition.

The ‘Autonomous Firefighting Robot,’ made in a box about 40cm wide and long, equipped with a spray nozzle, camera, LiDAR sensor, and wheels, learned about 20,000 fire-related photos using deep learning techniques and recognizes fire with 99% accuracy within 1 second of occurrence.

When the robot autonomously driving indoors detects fire, it measures the exact distance between the robot and the fire using two lenses and stereo vision technology.

The Arduino program, which receives this input, is designed to spray stored water to the fire location to extinguish the fire.

The Pukyong National University team that won the grand prize at the 2020 Busan Area LINC+ Project Joint Capstone Design Competition.

In a self-conducted experiment by Pukyong National University students, when a random fire was ignited, it took the robot an average of just over 2 seconds to detect the fire and spray water to extinguish it.

The Pukyong National University students designed the robot so that various sensors, such as fire alarms, can be attached and detached for use in various fields, and the autonomous firefighting system applied to the robot has been filed for a patent.

Seo Yong-cheol, head of the LINC+ Project Group at Pukyong National University, said, “The grand prize-winning work at this competition is an example of applying university students’ knowledge and technology to social disaster prevention in preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution era,” adding, “It is expected to be useful in effectively extinguishing initial fires by replacing fire alarms without firefighting functions or sprinklers that take time to detect fires.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.