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Anna Konda Snakefighter Country: Norway Manufacturer: SINTEF Year: 2006 Length: 9'10in (300cm) Weight: 154lbs (70kg) Degrees of Freedom: 20 Webpage Info

Anna Konda is a water-powered fire fighting snake robot developed by The Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (SINTEF). The robot is capable of slithering to places human firefighters cannot safely go and by attaching the robot to the end of a fire-hose it can extinguish fires that would otherwise be unstoppable.

The snake is 9 feet 10 inches (3m) long and weighs 154 pounds (70kg). It contains 20 water hydraulic motors that move the robotic joints, and the energy needed to power these motors comes from water pressurized to 100-bars, which is already available inside the fire-hose. This gives enough energy to this water-powered robot to climb up stairs, lift a car up off the ground, or even break though a wall.

Aside from fire fighting this robot could be used for underwater operations in connection with maintenance of oil installations on the sea floor, rescue operations in earthquake areas, or any other potentially explosive situations. Since the snake has modules, it is possible to design snakes for different functions: snakes can, for example, provide oxygen masks to people trapped in tunnels, light up the tunnel or carry a camera that provides firefighters outside an overview of the situation without requiring them to enter.

So far, there is no commercial version of this robot, but the researchers are trying to attract money to develop such a version.

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