Imagine a flying dragon that doesn't spout fire, but instead extinguishes it with blasts of water. Thanks to a team of Japanese researchers, this new kind of beast may soon be recruited to firefighter teams around the world, to help put out fires that are too dangerous for their human teammates to approach.
Starting the day by posting some not depressing stuff.
oh hey I know something about this! (I do structural firefighting)
The big asterisk to me is that this thing is flying. In a burning building the air gets dramatically hotter the higher you get. While the jets would presumably cool some of the smoke around it most of it would be surrounded by the hottest gases in the building instead of close to the ground where its more survivable. Every part would need to be a lot more heat resistant, including what I assume are some delicate controls close to the nozzles. In their demo its not really a problem because they are outside in fair weather but in a closed hot space that would be a different problem.
Because its flying you also have to lift water in the hose that supplies it creating a fun rocket fuel problem. You need the water to fly but you also are weighed down by it, requiring more propulsion and thus more water. Getting past that 10m range is going to take a lot of fun work.
There is also the human angle of "what happens if this finds a person?" Usually firefighters would put down the hose and drag whoever they find out but this system has no way to handle a patient if they could even see it! The operator would either be using visual or infrared cameras where they are operating it from, neither of which work in hot smoke where this would be flying. This looks like a recipe for a whole bunch of pressure washer injuries if those people get out alive.
oh hey I know something about this! (I do structural firefighting)
The big asterisk to me is that this thing is flying. In a burning building the air gets dramatically hotter the higher you get. While the jets would presumably cool some of the smoke around it most of it would be surrounded by the hottest gases in the building instead of close to the ground where its more survivable. Every part would need to be a lot more heat resistant, including what I assume are some delicate controls close to the nozzles. In their demo its not really a problem because they are outside in fair weather but in a closed hot space that would be a different problem.
Because its flying you also have to lift water in the hose that supplies it creating a fun rocket fuel problem. You need the water to fly but you also are weighed down by it, requiring more propulsion and thus more water. Getting past that 10m range is going to take a lot of fun work.
There is also the human angle of "what happens if this finds a person?" Usually firefighters would put down the hose and drag whoever they find out but this system has no way to handle a patient if they could even see it! The operator would either be using visual or infrared cameras where they are operating it from, neither of which work in hot smoke where this would be flying. This looks like a recipe for a whole bunch of pressure washer injuries if those people get out alive.