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This $90,000 fireproof tankbot will scout burning buildings for people to save
FireBot, a remote-controlled robot that can withstand temperatures as high as 650 degrees Celsius, is hoping to make scoping dangerous scenes safer for firefighters.
AT&T's public safety network knows which floor first responders are on
AT&T has upgraded its FirstNet first responder network with new support for vertical GPS, walkie talkies and rural emergencies.
California bill allows firefighters to ground pesky drones
As wildfires scorched sections of California Interstate I-15 last week, firefighters found themselves hamstrung and unable to deliver aerial water coverage for nearly 20 minutes because a couple of schmucks were flying their quadcopters directly overhead. In response, Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Glendale) and Senator Ted Gaines (R-El Dorado) have introduced Senate Bill 168. The bill would grant "immunity to any emergency responder who damages an unmanned aircraft in the course of firefighting, air ambulance, or search-and-rescue operations." The bill will also levy stiff fines and potentially even jail time for people whose UAVs inhibit an emergency response.
The best fight from Wrath of the Lich King
Last week there were a lot of calls in my "Best fight from Burning Crusade" article for Mimiron, Yogg-Saron, or Arthas himself to be the subject of this article. I had to smile at them because, well, they guessed it. I'll admit that, as a healer, I was tempted to pick Valythria, but I don't think I could really do that in good conscience. Valythria might have been one of my favorite fights, but the best? No, not really. My choice for the best fight from Wrath of the Lich King? Mimiron. Mimiron is a four-phase tier eight fight with some complex mechanics and a good deal of entertaining humor to it. In my opinion, the Ulduar raid was the crown jewel of Wrath of the Lich King, and Mimiron was one of the most fun and challenging bosses in it.
The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts from achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, 10 little points are all that stand between us and a new ... something. Many of the mounts this week be familiar to you if you've read The OverAchiever: Pimp Thy Ride, which I wrote before the Cataclysm content patch with an eye toward the number of people who wanted to slap a 310% mount on their toons before it had to be trained. Sadly, none of the mounts described in that article, barring one, will grant Master Riding for free now. Also read: Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts Mountain O' Mounts in Outland Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons Mountain O' Mounts in raids
Harvard physicist puts fires out with electrified wand, hopes to share on HarvardConnection
Okay, so maybe Ludovico Cademartiri will be forced to share the good news on Facebook (or ConnectU, if he's into playing the role of rebel), but at least he's bound to see over a couple of hundred hits. According to The Harvard Crimson, the aforesaid physicist and a smattering of other researchers have stumbled upon a novel way to extinguish flames: electricity. The idea is eventually enable firefighters to squash fires without having to douse a home or object with water and foam -- if hit with a beam of juice, there's at least a sliver of a chance that something can be salvaged. While the specifics of the project are obviously far above our heads, the gist of it is fairly simple -- flames contain soot particles, which become "electrically charged during combustion." Given that those very particles react to electrical fields, a strong enough beam can twist things until it's extinguished completely. Quite honestly, it's a hands-on experience we're desperately trying to arrange, but till then, it looks like another round of Harry Potter will have to do.
The OverAchiever: Evil achievements
I love achievements, but sometimes you look at them and realize that somewhere on the development team lurks a sadist of the highest order -- and not just any sadist, but one with a business plan and an unwitting audience of 12 million players. What are evil achievements? They're the soul-killing rep grinds, the raiding milestones that required sacrificing a farm animal to get, and even fun pasttimes like battlegrounds into which a sizable dose of misery has been added. Eventually you just want to grab the nearest developer and shake him back and forth, screaming, "What the hell were you thinking?" Below are three of my top picks as the most evil achievements in the game, chosen via the scientific rationale of hating life and myself while doing them. They're selections from a lengthier OverAchiever I've been slowly assembling on the 25 most evil achievements in the game. While my main's a hair's breadth from the It's Over Nine Thousand! feat of strength, there are still quite a few achievements (many of them PvP-related) that she's missed, and I think it's pretty easy to underestimate the agony-value of achievements you haven't personally done. So, rather than simply ignore them, I'd love to get some commenting feedback on the worst, most annoying and most soul-destroying achievements of which you've been a part. Some may disagree on the ultimate difficulty of the following three achievements, but I remain undeterred from my belief that every single one has been milked from the angry teat of Satan himself.
The OverAchiever: Dungeon and raid titles
Titles; they are cool, they are wonderful, and in a not-inconsiderable number of cases, they are very hard to get. Almost without exception, every single title in the game is also linked to an achievement. Today we're going to examine how you can get (or, in some cases, how it was possible to get) about half of the 19 titles currently available from dungeons and raids. Next week, we'll cover the last half, going in alphabetical order. If you're a skimmer, the two toughest achievements are actually at the tail end this week, and if you're currently in Icecrown Citadel, there's two currently-unobtainable titles that may interest you here (in addition to another set next week).
Fire-fighting robots head to South Korea, could face conflicts of interest
Fire fighting robots have been put to work for little to no pay once or twice before, but it seems as if the exception is slowly becoming the rule. Just recently, a smattering of fire stations in Daegu (just south of Seoul, South Korea) enlisted the help of two robotic firefighters to jump into "the center of blazing infernos" if need be. The Fire Spy Robots are fully automated and equipped with wheels, though it should be noted that their help is currently labeled "a trial run." Both of the critters were constructed by Hoya Robot and can be maneuvered via humans watching the surroundings through an onboard camera, and while the company claims that these guys can shake off temperatures as high as 500 degrees Celsius for over an hour, there's no mention of what kind of mental meltdown it would surely have should it arrive to extinguish the work of its cousin.[Via FarEastGizmos]
Buying Real Heroes: Firefighter could make you a real hero
Click for more firefighting heroes Epicenter Studios has announced an initiative to assist real heroes through the sales of its game, Real Heroes: Firefighter. The studio says that it will donate a share of the proceeds to the Firefighter Cancer Support Network, a charity that aims to "provide timely assistance to all fire service members and their families in the event of cancer diagnosis," though Nathaniel McClure, CEO of Epicenter, says he also appreciates how the charity "aggressively promotes prevention and early detection." So, not only will you save virtual people if you decide to pick up the game, but you could be helping in the recovery of real people in need, too. It's like kind of like a Double Stuff Oreo of justice.Real Heroes: Firefighter is slated for release in June 2009. %Gallery-63399%
Real Heroes: Firefighter finds real publisher
Conspiracy Entertainment obviously wants to ensure that there'll be none of this fake hero business on the Wii, because it's gone and signed up Epicenter Studios' Real Heroes: Firefighter, which it intends to release in the U.S. during Q2, 2009. Because it's been almost a year since we heard anything about the project, this morning's press release kindly reminds us that Real Heroes: Firefighter will utilize the Wii Remote as a fire hose, a fire axe, and a crowbar, all in the name of fighting Epicenter's proprietary "Thinking Fire" technology. Conspiracy CFO Keith Tanaka was also on hand with some quotes about product line-ups and distribution, for which we thank him and move on.[Via press release]
"Robot" firefighters get put into service
We've seen robot firefighters before, and even a robot firefighting contest, but it looks like some brave bots from the folks at Qinetiq are among the first to actually see service, although their roles are decidedly limited for the time being. According to Popular Mechanics, the robots are only being used to put out fires involving Acetylene gas, which had previously simply been left to burn themselves out due to the risk of explosions. With the bots, however, they're able get things moving along far more quickly, which is especially useful when the blaze is causing train delays. It seems that's a job too big for just one robot, however, as Qinetiq has reportedly been commissioned to put three bots into service during a six month trial period, including a Talon bot that uses thermal imaging to asses the situation, a 2,160-pound Brokk 90 robot that can "tear through walls or shove vehicles out the way," and last but not least the ATV-sized "Black Max" that actually douses the situation. Sadly, it seems that the bots are all remotely-controlled for the time being, and not fully autonomous, but we're sure it's only a matter of time before they really get to show what they're capable of.
i-Garment's "smart suit" helps disaster relief agents
Designed to help firefighters communicate independently of unreliable traditional systems such as cellphone networks, i-Garment's "smart suit" does more than just enable voices to be heard. The suit also packs in location and health monitoring, with a whole infrastructure behind it including multiple stages from the field vehicle back to HQ. The European Space Agency recently approved the suit after a series of tests including firefighting scenarios: it's not currently planned for the US, but it wouldn't be surprising to see this or a similar system over here sometime soon.[Thanks, Michelle. Via InventorSpot]
OLE pill bug robot concept could fight forest fires
German researchers at the University of Madgeburg-Stendal have developed a concept for a robot shaped like a pill millipede that could potentially detect and fight forest fires. Were the "OLE" a real robot, it would be able to scuttle around the forest floor at speeds of around 6 to 12 MPH, using infrared and "biosensors" to detect fire sources. If it gets into trouble, it can curl up just like a real pill bug and be fully protected thanks to a ceramic-fibre compound shell that can withstand temperature of 1,300 Degrees Centigrade. According to the researchers, 30 of these OLEs could protect a forest area as large as 2,700 square miles, whilst simultaneously freaking out hundreds of forest animals.[Via GearFuse; thanks, Steve]
Epicenter Studios planning to fight fire with... Wii
Despite Mega Man's interpretation of the subject, a fireman is designed to put out fires, not to start them. Yes, we said "designed." Mega Man actually got that part right -- firemen are, in fact, super efficient robots. According to upstart developer Epicenter Studios, they're also the perfect subject for a video game on Nintendo's Wii. The studio, comprised of former producers for the Call of Duty, Shrek, Spider-Man and Star Trek franchises, recently announced a Wii game by the name of Real Heroes: Firefighter. Gamasutra describes it as a "firefighting action puzzle game," one that has the Wiimote becoming a water hose, a fire axe or a crowbar (for saving people, not bashing aliens!). The game also features "Thinking Fire" technology meant to incur "unexpected changes to the environments that will suddenly alter the player's options and strategies." It sounds an awful lot like real, dumb fire to us, but we'll take anything given today's glaring lack of Burning Rangers 2. If the game finds a publisher and makes its planned 2008 holiday release, we'll see whether or not those flames are intelligent enough to spread to the sales charts.[Via Wii Fanboy]
Hold the hose real tight and get ready for a real fight
A new developer called Epicenter Games is developing a non-violent firefighting action-puzzle game for the Wii, called Real Heroes: Firefighters. The title should help prevent confusion with those other Real American Heroes. Real Heroes casts players as a new firefighter in a busy station, and, of course, uses the Wiimote to simulate a fire hose.The game makes use of what Epicenter calls "Thinking Fire," which will totally beat you at Othello react unexpectedly and semi-randomly to your actions. The game doesn't have a publisher yet, but they're hoping for a release in late 2008.
Anna Konda: the firefighting snakebot
So it looks like firefighters may be the next unlucky professionals replaced by cheap robotic labor, at least if a snakebot built by the Foundation for Industrial and Scientific Research in Norway (SINTEF) ever makes it into mass production. Lovingly nicknamed Anna Konda (no explanation necessary), the Norwegian bot was assembled using 20 hydraulic motors powered by a regular fire hose, whose 100 bars of pressure give it enough strength to break through walls and even lift a car right up off the ground. Anna consists of ten segments containing angle sensors, two valves, and two motors each -- rotating around orthogonal axes and wrapped in a tough steel exoskeleton -- that are controlled by a computer to help her maneuver over numerous types of terrain. Besides providing support in dangerous situations like tunnel fires, SINTEF envisions future versions of Anna being used to locate and provide oxygen to earthquake victims or perform maintenance on underwater oil rigs. The good news for human firefighters is that at least a few of their traditional tasks still remain beyond the robosnake's capabilities -- well, until it's able to climb a tree and rescue a stranded cat without breaking its neck, that is.[Via Technology Trends]
