--- title: Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR | TIME description: Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR canonical: https://time.com/video/KHcSEtoC/ og:title: Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR og:description: Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR og:url: https://time.com/video/KHcSEtoC/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/KHcSEtoC/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR twitter:description: Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/KHcSEtoC/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=7b316203-4201-4a90-a8b8-3838f86d10a7&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=7b316203-4201-4a90-a8b8-3838f86d10a7&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR [Watch (HLS stream): Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/KHcSEtoC.m3u8) (4:58)  _Published 2015-02-05. Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR_ --- Jul 27, 2023 5:53 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Ford Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Research Vehicle- 1st Automaker to Test Autonomous Vehicle at Mcity](/video/Rg7IuLrX/) ### Ford Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Research Vehicle- 1st Automaker to Test Autonomous Vehicle at Mcity [Land Rover Autonomous Car Technology](/video/bgYnhIUQ/) ### Land Rover Autonomous Car Technology [Audi Autonomous Office Chair](/video/z5ZDUUNx/) ### Audi Autonomous Office Chair --- ## Transcript [00:00] [ MUSIC ] [00:17] I'm Doctor Thomas McKenna. I'm a Program Officer at [00:20] the Office of Naval Research. So there are substantial [00:23] losses incurred when you have a major fire when you [00:26] can't suppress it at an early stage. SAFFiR is the [00:30] shipboard autonomous firefighting robot. And this [00:34] is a program that's been going on for about five years [00:38] basically to develop a humanoid capable of fire [00:41] suppression. My name is John Farley. I work at the [00:44] Naval Research Laboratory, and I'm the director of the [00:47] Shadwall, which is the Navy's fire test ship. If we have a [00:50] ship on fire, we have to be able to quickly get [00:54] it under control and then regain the ship's ability to [00:58] maintain it's fighting mission. You know, we have. Not [01:01] only the ship, but we have ordinance on board. And [01:04] we have a lot of flammable systems on board. [01:06] Sometimes it's hard to keep the sailors up to the latest [01:10] as far as training is concerned. What sometimes they [01:13] could create an environment and make it worse. Now, [01:16] the robot could be trained and constantly updated to [01:20] make sure that conditions are not as bad. As what a [01:24] human could make it. Well our objectives for the demo [01:26] on the Shadwell were to show that the robot could walk [01:30] over what was a very uneven floor. That it could [01:34] orient itself to the fire. That it could autonomously [01:38] handle the hose, operate the hose, aim [01:42] the hose. And suppress the fire which it's succeeded [01:45] in. I'm Brian Lattimer. I'm an associate professor at [01:49] Virginia Tech in the Department of Mechanical [01:52] Engineering. I think robots are well- suited to be sent [01:56] into those environments and bipedal robots are [01:59] particularly good for those applications because. Even [02:04] in the tight, confined conditions that you [02:08] might have inside the structures, these types of robots [02:11] can be designed to maneuver in those conditions. A [02:16] safer is an electromechanical robot, so it's driven by [02:20] batteries and all the motors are electrical, so we put a. [02:25] Type suit on the robot, just to protect it from those [02:28] types of basic steam, particulate, [02:34] and water drop hazards. So we have visible [02:38] cameras onboard the robot. We have something called [02:41] Lidar which. Is a rotating laser that [02:46] gives the location of the points in the field of the view [02:49] of the robot. And then lastly we have a stereoscopic [02:54] thermal imaging cameras that the robot uses to [02:59] detect and locate the position of a fire so that it can [03:02] suppress it. We combine the notion of smart [03:06] sensors in the spaces. Microflyers that can fly [03:11] even in smoke. Go through those extremely narrow [03:14] doors that it could locate fires [03:18] and operate in those hallways, even in dense fire [03:22] smoke. And it succeeded all those tasks. So, today was [03:26] the first time we came on board an actual Navy ship. [03:29] We were able to do a lot of things, today [03:33] that, that we hadn't done previously and, we have a lot [03:36] of hope for new advancements. Spends in the future. [03:39] We have some fundamental issues in robotic mobility [03:43] that we still have to address as well as working [03:47] out the human system integration issues, [03:52] and we'll continue to advance the capability with better [03:56] and better demonstration. At the current time, the [04:00] robot is telly operated, so you have operators standing [04:04] off with a computer console. Where we're, we intend to [04:08] go is to have a combination of [04:12] natural language and gesture control. The robot [04:16] has gone through. Amazing transition within four years. [04:21] And I think it's a worthy investment for a long term [04:24] project, but it's gonna take a lot of time, a lot of [04:27] dedication, and we're working towards human robot [04:31] teams, what we call the hybrid force, humans and [04:36] robots working together. [ MUSIC ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR","description":"Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot - SAFFiR","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/KHcSEtoC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-02-05T15:56:42.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/KHcSEtoC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/KHcSEtoC/","duration":"PT4M58S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/KHcSEtoC/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```