Cal Poly students design robot to help fight wildfires — by protecting people’s homes
In January, four Cal Poly engineering students were presented with a specific problem for their senior project:
What could they develop that would stop wind-driven wildfire embers from destroying homes?
At the time, California was still reeling from the Camp Fire, which killed at least 85 people and destroyed more than 13,000 homes, making it the state’s deadliest wildfire.
Eleven months later, the students arrived at a solution: Project EMBER, a robot that uses a thermal camera to detect fire and a sprinkler system to extinguish flames. They hope the robot can one day help people living in wildfire-prone areas — for the cost of a nice vacuum cleaner.
“This is something never accomplished before,” said Ryan Kissinger, one of the students working on the project. “This was the frontrunner of this design for fire protection.”
How does Project EMBER work?
During a wildfire, people worried about defending their homes have two options. One is staying home to put out fires with a hose, and the other is evacuating and hoping their home will be okay, Kissinger said in a Cal Poly news release.
But staying home during a wildfire can potentially put firefighters’ lives at risk, Cal Fire spokesman Adan Orozco said.
“When you have multiple people say ‘I’m not leaving,’ you keep that worry with you,” Orozco said. “You’re trying to fight fire, trying to come up with a plan to keep everyone safe and now you have this thought in your head like, ‘Oh my God, someone could possibly be injured or die because they’re at their house.’ “
Project EMBER (Economical Mechatronic Burn-Extinguishing Robot) is a robot that stands about 2 and a half feet tall and can be staked into a lawn. A thermal camera mounted at the top rotates around, looking for signs of a fire.
Once the camera detects a fire, it triggers the sprinkler to start extinguishing the flames, group members told The Tribune.
Group member Danny Santoro said that sprinkler works the same way as a lawn sprinkler that moves back and forth; it’s just positioned vertically.
The sprinkler can spray up to 25 feet away, which covers a 2,000 square-foot radius — larger than an average lawn in California, group member Chris Slezak told The Tribune.
The robot is powered by a rechargeable battery, and the water comes out of a hose connected to the base, Kissinger said.
The Cal Poly team checked around to see what fire suppression systems were available and found that there were expensive systems for businesses but not really anything available for homes besides a few sprinkler systems.
“We wanted it to be able to suppress a fire in an average-size house,” Slezak said.
Affordable fire protection
Before you head to Home Depot to find your own Project EMBER, know that they’re not available for sale just yet.
The group members said their hope is that they can open-source Project EMBER to companies that can develop more sophisticated versions of the robot.
“The idea of this project is just to develop the technology and get it out there,” Kissinger said. That means the team won’t start putting these out on the market themselves, but hope another company will one day.
One of the things the team did toward that end was try to develop something that would be affordable for most people.
The group figured out a price point by putting out a survey on a Facebook group for Cal Poly parents, Santoro said.
“We got an impression that they’re willing to pay between $500 and $1,000 for something like this,” he said. “We tried lowering the price point even more to make it affordable for all homeowners who might be in a fire area.”
The finished product cost a little more than $300 to build, Santoro said. Team members believe that a mass-produced version would cost about $100 to $200 apiece.
“I think what makes this project so interesting is it’s never been done before,” Kissinger said. “This project allows us to be the frontrunners of a technology that can change people’s lives.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 4:45 AM with the headline "Cal Poly students design robot to help fight wildfires — by protecting people’s homes."
