China's first robot fire truck appeared recently in Shenyang,
capital of Liaoning Province. The innovation made a great
breakthrough in remote-controlled firefight.
The fire truck is 7.2 meters long, 2.4 meters wide and 2.5 meters
high, with a designed loading capacity of seven tons. It currently
carries four tons of water and one ton of foam. It can shoot 100
liters of water per second to a distance of 80 meters. Without any
driver, the fire truck can operate properly in a firefight.
The engine was developed after a fire took place on September 1
last year. Costing 1.5 million yuan (US$181,000), it can operate
completely automatically, getting started, turning off engine,
speeding up or slowing down, stopping, lightening and so on.
In
addition to remote-controlled operation, the vehicle can also be
driven by man. It is equipped with long-range water cannons and
three remote-controlled cameras. With a separated water pump
engine, water press can be added twice to extend the shot
range.
The operator can control the truck within 500 meters with the help
of the wireless video system, composed by a main video camera and
two assistant cameras. The main video camera shoots the general
situation of the fire site while one of the assistant cameras
shoots the road conditions and the other shoots the operation of
the water cannons.
A
robot fire truck is especially useful in dangerous fires of
petroleum, chemical and poisonous materials.
(china.org.cn by Feng Yikun November 8, 2002)