Meet London's Robotic Firefighting Crew
Robots are just like us: some become cooks, others go into sports, some intern for a while, and then there are the ones who find their calling in civic duty. Included in this last group are members of the recently unveiled London robotic firefighting team. The defense tech company QinetiQ designed the four robots for the express purpose of extinguishing fires involving cylinders of the industrial gas acetylene (there have been 471 such fires in the last five years in London). These types of fires are a particular threat to firefighters since danger remains even after they extinguish the flame: the cylinders' contents, when heated up, undergo a chemical reaction that leads them to produce yet another round of heat that could lead to further fire. Danger aside, these kinds of fires used to require the area...