Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 24 No.

2-2019
ISSN:1813-1786 (Print) 2313-7770 (Online)

Towards Reducing the Damage of Fire Through

Firefighting Autonomous Robot
U.B. Abad 1, M. Asif 2, M.B. Ahmad3, T. Mahmood 4, A. Hashmi 5
1, 5
Department of Computer Sciences, Lahore Leads University, Lahore, Pakistan
2
Department of Computer Sciences, Lahore Garrison University, Lahore, Pakistan
3
College of Computing and Information Sciences, PAF Karachi Institute of Economics and Tech., Karachi, Pakistan
4
Department of Computer Science, University of Engineering and Technology Taxila, Pakistan
4
[email protected]

Abstract- In most of the offices in Pakistan, the water the fire fighters to access the site of fire because of
spray is usually used as a fire extinguisher agent to explosive material, smoke and high temperature. To
control moderate fire. This traditional practice cope up this situation, robots can play a vital role for
smothers the fire at the cost of damage in terms of fire extinguishing. The robots have the abilities to
electronics equipment and documents located in the operate in that environment in which human cannot
vicinity of the fire. To reduce the damage rate, an work.
autonomous firefighting robot is developed that first In literature, several firefighting robots are developed.
detects fire with the help of flame sensors, then Firefighting robots are designed keeping certain tasks
automatically reach to the fire place and extinguishes in mind such as locating, analyzing and controlling
the fire through releasing the cloud of carbon dioxide fires, conducting search and rescue and monitoring
gas. Moreover, it is capable of sending notification dangerous variables [4]. These robots mostly rely on
through Short Message Service (SMS) to the concerned Ultra Violet (UV) or Infrared (IR) sensors. Anna
person or rescue departments. A series of tests have Konnda [5,6] is a very interesting robot concept
been performed on implemented robot and the results developed by the SINTEF Group. It is a water-powered
show that it functions well as intended. hydraulic robot snake. It is driven by twenty custom-
built water hydraulic cylinders. The snake measures 3
Keywords-Short Message Service, Robot, Firefighting, meters long and weighs 75 Kgs. Numerous micro-
Flame Sensor, GSM processors are used to control this robot. The main
controller may be connected to a Personal Computer
I. I NTRODUCTION (PC) through Bluetooth. The Firemote [7] is a
firefighting robot designed by Ryland Research
A robot is a machine designed to execute various Limited. Its weight is around 450 Kgs. This robot is a
tasks in an automatic way with speed and accuracy [1]. remote controlled (up to 300 meters); it can endure high
Robots can be categories in numerous types based on temperatures as well as extinguish fire using either
the jobs they perform. They can be guided by external foam or water. These robots extinguish the fire but the
gadget or the control might be inserted inside them. In use of water as fire extinguishing agent may damage
these days, robots are programmed to efficiently the electronic equipment and important documents.
perform complicated and dangerous tasks in various Secondly, these robots have much weight that a single
domains, such as industrial, medical, civil, electrical person can't be able to move it alone. Mobile
etc. They perform these tasks with the help of sensors firefighting robots are mostly in the form of remote
and modules which are connected by various micro controlled vehicles attached with fire control tools like
controllers through wires and jumpers [2]. Robotics water or foam hoses [4]. These robots have the ability to
gained the popularity due to the advancement of move into unsafe areas for human-beings with the help
various technologies such as artificial intelligence, of visual camera, an array of sensors, IR and other
computing, sensors, nanotechnologies and etc. [3]. technology that provide information for the navigation
Fire has numerous positive attributes including energy, to a remote operator. Fire Ox [4] is semi-autonomous
heat, cleansing, etc. but it is extremely dangerous when firefighting vehicle that carries its own water tank. It
it becomes out of control [4]. It is common observation can be controlled from up to 200 miles away. The
that a house, office, factory, commercial areas etc. can Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot (THOR) is semi-
easily catch fire from short circuit, the misuse of autonomous that operates by the remote operator.
instruments and appliances, heating equipment and Thermite Robot [4] is a remote-control vehicle. It
smoking. Fire can cause heavy damage and loss of carries a hose and has the ability of pumping 500
human life and property. It is sometimes impossible for gallons of water per minute. In such kind of robots,

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 Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 24 No. 2-2019
ISSN:1813-1786 (Print) 2313-7770 (Online)

operator is mandatory and fire may cause hug amount arena and extinguished the candle is discussed in [14].
of loss before rescue operation starts. In some cases, a The blue arena is particularly designed for line-
black line path is assigned, so by following those path tracking based maze navigation. In [15], proposed a
robots extinguish fire. Also, robots are designed as tank robot that had the ability to search an area and located
robot with flame, ultrasonic, thermal array, and the fire, then extinguish it before it rage out of control.
compass sensor [7]. Its simulation area is designed in A robot that had the ability to detect and extinguish
miniature, its miniature equipped with furniture, sound automatically is presented in [16]. In order to detect the
damper and uneven floor. But the use of various sensors fire, temperature and gas sensors were used in robot. In
makes the design complicated; there will be a this design, water spray is used to extinguish the fire
possibility of messing up of the output. and movement of robot is controlled with the help of
In [8], a design of robot that is capable of detection and gears motor and motor driver.
suppressing fires to minimize human life risk is In can be concluded that most of the existing
presented. The robot is designed with the help of flame firefighting robots are either semi-autonomous or are
sensors, ultrasonic sensors and Arduino IDE. The robot based on complex design. Some of the existing robots
has the capability to detect flames in indoor are heavy weight and most of them use water as fire
environment and maneuvering towards the flame to extinguishing agent. So, there is a need to develop a
extinguish it with the help of carbon dioxide. A simple and light weight firefighting autonomous robot
hardware based automatic fire extinguisher robot is that uses extinguishing agent other than water. The
proposed in [9]. The robot had the temperature sensing development of such robot not only extinguishes the
capability that helped to detect the fire and to move the fire but also decrease the damage rate that occur due to
robot toward the fire. In this work thermocouple is used water spares and manual extinguish methods.
to detect the fire and to measure its intensity. Moreover, In this paper fully automated firefighting autonomous
calcium silicate protection shield is used to avoid self- robot is proposed which deal with the fire problems in
destruction of robot. Another implementation of household, laboratories, small scale industries etc. The
designing of fire fighter robot system based on web robot first detects the fire with the help of flame
server is presented in [10]. It comprised of two DC sensors, then automatically reaches to the fire place and
motors for motion. The robot used three sensors extinguishes the fire through releasing the cloud of
including temperature sensor to monitor the carbon dioxide gas. Moreover, it has also an ability to
temperature, IR sensor to detect the obstacle and smoke inform the owner and relevant rescue authorizes/
sensor to detect the fire. Android phone is also mounted departments about the fire through Short Message
on robot that continuously captured the images with the Service (SMS).
help of mobile phone camera and transmitted the The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The
snapshots to the web server so the user is able to view proposed robot is given in Section II. Section III
the current scenario of area where that robot is working, describes the functionality of the proposed solution.
from anywhere through the web server. The robot Section IV describes the experimental analysis.
detected the fire and moved toward it and tried to Finally, the conclusion is drawn in Section V.
extinguish the fire with the help of water spray.
An Arduino system based firefighting robot application II. PROPOSED SYSTEM
is proposed in [11]. The proposed robot was capable to
scan the flame and autonomously navigated through a A. Hardware Description
modeled floor plan and extinguished the fire. In [12], a The proposed system consists of following hardware
firefighting robot that scanned the fire flame and modules:
autonomously navigated through a modeled floor plan
is suggested. The presented robot system can be used as 1) Arduino UNO
a path guider in normal situation as well. A prototype Arduino UNO is a microcontroller board developed by
for an autonomous firefighting robot that have the Arduino.cc which is an open-source platform. It is
capability to locate and extinguish the fire in a given based on the AVR Microchip ATmega328P micro-
environment is also proposed in [13]. The robot controller [17, 18]. It consists of several digital and
navigated the arena and avoided any obstacles it faced analog input/output pins that can be interfaced to
in its excursion. The robot consisted of infrared and various expansion boards (shields) and circuits [19].
ultrasonic sensors for navigation, flame sensor for fire Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is the
detection and a fan for fire extinguishing. It also software used for Arduino devices. It is free to use and
provided a live feed and map representation that require some basic skills to learn it. It provides the
allowed the human to visualize the fire extinguishing support to control and sense the external electronic
process. A design of fully autonomous fire fighting devices in real world [20, 21]. In this work, Arduino
robot having the ability to detect fire candle, navigate UNO Rev3 [22] is used. It is programmed using C
through a maze of white fluorescence lines on blue language.

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 Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 24 No. 2-2019
ISSN:1813-1786 (Print) 2313-7770 (Online)

2) Flame Sensor 1) Schematic Diagram

The Infrared IR flame sensor is used to locate the fire or The schematic diagrams of the proposed firefighting
other mild assets that are in the range of wavelength robot using actual modules and paint art are shown in
from 760nm to 1100nm [23, 24]. The module figure 2 and 3, respectively. The block diagrams show
comprises of an IR sensor, potentiometer, OP-Amp all the connections which are made during the
circuitry and a led indicator. When a flame could be development of proposed robot. Black and red color
detected, the module will activate its red led. This wires show the power connections by battery while all
module is sensitive to flame but it could additionally the input/output (D0) wires are connected with
locate everyday mild. The detection factor is 60 tiers. Arduino.
The sensitivity of this sensor is adjustable and it
additionally has a solid overall performance.

3) DC Motor Driver
A motor controller is a device that acts as an
intermediary among robotics microcontroller, batteries
and automobiles [25]. In this robot L298N model [26]
of DC motor driver is used. It is an H-bridged motor
driver module which can move left and right wheels of
the robot separately that help it to move in left or right
directions. The main purpose of using DC motor in this
work is to drive/move the robot to exact location of
flam.

4) Servo Motor
The main function of servo motor is to press the carbon
dioxide spray cane. It is also known as cam motor. It
has the voltage of 6V and enough power for press the Fig. 2: Schematic Diagram (Actual Modules)
extinguisher can. Servo motor has three pins included
power and input [27]. In this work, 6v Servo motor is 2) Flow Diagram
used [28]. The flow diagram of the proposed solution is shown in
Figure 4.
5) GSM Module
GSM module is usually used to send or receive III. W ORKING
messages through any Sim card. It uses the 12V current
as a power source. It has RX and TX pins for input from The working of the robot is demonstrated below:
the micro-controller [29]. In this work, SIM900A Step 1: Initially, robot is in steady state and detecting
GSM/GPRS module [30] is used to send notification the fire with the help of flame sensors. Figure 5 shows
about fire detection and extinguishing to relevant the steady state of the robot.
person or rescue authority. Step 2: When the fire is detected by the robot, its red
LED turns on as shown in Figure 6.
B. Block Diagram Step 3: After detecting the fire, automatically SMS is
The block diagram of the proposed robot system is send to the owner whom number is feed in the GSM
shown in Figure 1. module. Figure 7 shows the sample SMS.

Fig. 1: Block Diagram

Fig. 3: Schematic Diagram (Paint Art)

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 Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 24 No. 2-2019
ISSN:1813-1786 (Print) 2313-7770 (Online)

Fig. 4: Flow Diagram

Fig. 7: Fire detected notification

Fig. 5: Steady state of robot

Fig. 8: Proceed toward the fire

Fig. 6: Fire detected

Step 4: After sending the SMS to concerned person or

authority, robot moves towards the fire as shown in
Figure 8.
Fig. 9: Spray carbon dioxide on fire
Step 5: When robot reaches close to the fire. It releases
the cloud of carbon dioxide gas to extinguish the fire as Step 6: After successfully extinguishing the fire, robot
depicted in Figure 9. sends SMS to owner again. The sample SMS is shown
in Figure 10.

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 Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 24 No. 2-2019
ISSN:1813-1786 (Print) 2313-7770 (Online)

The prototype of proposed fire extinguishing robot

is shown in figure 11.

Fig. 11: Prototype of the proposed robot

V. CONCLUSION
Fig. 10: Fire extinguished notification In this work, firefighting autonomous robot is
presented to reduce the loss of human life and property
IV. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS caused by the fire. The robot is capable of detecting the
fire in its vicinity with the help of flam sensor and send
After all the connections and programing of the notification to the concerned person through SMS.
robot, finally the product is ready for the test. For this After sending SMS, robot moves toward the fire and try
purpose, the robot was placed in the room. After the to extinguish the fire using carbon dioxide spray.
complete fire extinguishing process, it is observed that Moreover, after successfully extinguishing the fire it
the robot is able to detect the flame having wavelength send SMS again to the relevant person. The
from 760nm to 1100nm with the range of 20 cm in all experimental results show that proposed robot
three directions (straight, right, and left) [5]. After fire functions well as intended.
detection, the robot sends the message to the owner, In future, this solution can be converted in to a
then approaches to fire position rapidly and try to firefighting drone. The use of quad copter mechanism
extinguish the fire with the spray of carbon dioxide. instead of wheel in proposed solution may play a handy
After successfully extinguishing the fire, robot sends role to extinguish the fire on high building with the help
SMS to the relevant person. of remote control.

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 Technical Journal, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Taxila, Pakistan Vol. 24 No. 2-2019
ISSN:1813-1786 (Print) 2313-7770 (Online)

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