14 DAY TRIAL // In a recent report, researchers at the King's College London and the Sheffield Hallam University in the UK detail plans to put reins on robots and have them act like guide dogs for firefighters exploring buildings engulfed in smoke.
The idea is to have the robots walk in front of the firefighters and record the shape and the size of whatever obstacles they come across. Using the reins fitted on them, the robots would then transmit this information to the firefighters in the form of vibrations.
The vibrations produced by the robots when encountering hard-to-see obstacles in their path would be picked up by a high-tech sleeve worn by the firefighters and converted into data that the scientists promise would be fairly easy to interpret.
The scientists say that their idea to put reins on robots, just like Santa does with Rudolf and his other reindeer, is sure to help firefighters explore smoke-filled buildings both faster and more safely. This is because they would forever be warned about obstacles ahead.
Apparently, the robots would be designed in such a way that they would be able to predict where the firefighters behind them want to go and would even be able to slow down or move faster, depending on how confident the folks holding the reins feel at any given moment.
And now for the bad news: the King's College London and the Sheffield Hallam University researchers have until now only completed proof of concept. What this means is that they are just now trying to put together a fully functional prototype for testing in real-life conditions.
