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Comment by funkaster | Hacker News Reader

while the Colossus looks really interesting, I think the biggest impact was the video feed. I don't have the specs, but just by quick glancing of the video, that small stream of water probably didn't help at all in this particular case. You would have to be way closer for it to be effective, or use a different pattern of water if you're trying to achieve something else (e.g. ventilation or cooling down). In any case, really interesting tech.

Source: firefighter for over 8 years, attend hundreds of structural fires, tens of 5+ alarms, few of them in historical buildings.

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It looks like they were mostly using it to dump water on the pile of debris from the collapsed roof. Seems like a reasonable use case (you wouldn't want crews operating under the rest of the roof that hadn't collapsed).

Yeah, it makes sense that being able to see inside the structure would be a huge help in planning how to take on the fire.

I was wondering about the robot's water stream being used to keep things currently not burning from starting on fire. Do you think this would be used to hose down relics they were trying to protect from the rest of the blaze or is that not even considered when trying to get it under control?

that could be something, but you would have to weigh in the damage from water vs fire. watering relics could potentially damage and destroy relics as much as fire. Same with walls: you can water them to prevent them from catching fire, but that will eventually deteriorate the structural integrity, so you need to be careful.

The Colossus is "Fireproof" according to the marketing website [1]. It appears to contain Lithium batteries, so how hot do you think it can get before it stops working?

1. https://www.shark-robotics.com/en/robot/colossus/

I would be extremely surprised if it didn't cool itself with the water hookup

If they're using the water that's flowing through that hose to cool it, it could be fine with a very high external temperature. I think I would be more concerned about the cameras than the batteries, they're harder to cool.

Apparently, a significant difference between American and French firefighters is that the latter prefer to fight the fire from the inside (e.g.: avoid the heat and steam to accumulate inside).

Apart from the video aspect, wouldn't the Colossus' water stream help them achieve that: creating a path for them to intervene and potentially escape ?

Where have you seen that difference apparent? That's not the case, in my experience.

I was just reading in Le Monde yesterday that this approach is used on historical buildings as working inward would trap the fire and essentially create a localized furnace that would damage the artifacts inside.

Also, the furnace could compromise the stone structure. So the focus was to keep the wall from getting too hot, first from the inside.

The way it was explained in Lemonde, it's that french firefihters don't always do that. They did it to preserve the interior, but that might not be their every day strategy.

How many would we need to be more effective? Perhaps a small swarm could be used?

The yearly forest fires in California seem to be difficult to control. A robotic army of firefighters might help?

I've noticed that people have been giving a lot of credit to the fire fighters. It's clear they tried their best and risked their lives to remove the artifacts that they could. But it's also clear that everything that could burn did burn:

https://images.app.goo.gl/PsAzFTwaz9rRC4Qp6

The entire roof is in ashes and there doesn't appear to be anything combustible left.

The bell towers did start burning, and their structure is wood to a large degree. Just the bells dropping could have destroyed all horizontal structures and threatened the towers’ stability.

They also literally grabbed and ran out with a lot of rather delicate cultural artifacts.

You missed the part about the trusses in the bell tower that didn't burn. If they burnt and the bells fell (13 tons for the biggest one!), then the whole building would have collapsed.

They had guys in the tower, protecting that.

Given the hand they were dealt[1], I think they did a remarkable job.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/world/europe/why-notre-da...

The organ casework looks quite combustible to me: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10214621195466674&se...

Here are some of my thoughts (from another discussion) on the efforts of the firefighters:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19673885

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