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Development and implementation of arduino microcontroller based dual

mode fire extinguishing robot

Conference Paper · March 2017

DOI: 10.1109/ITCOSP.2017.8303141

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 2017 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT T ECHNIQUES IN CONTROL , OPTIMIZATION AND SIGNAL P ROCESSING

Development and Implementation of Arduino

Microcontroller Based Dual Mode Fire
Extinguishing Robot
Joyal Raju Johaan Varkey Paul
UG Scholar, EEE Department UG Scholar, EEE Department
Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Amal Jyothi College of Engineering
Kanjirapally, Kerala Kanjirapally, Kerala
joyalraju3395@gmail.com johaanpaul96@gmail.com

Sheik Mohammed S Georgy Abel John

Assistant Professor, EEE Department UG Scholar, EEE Department
Amal Jyothi College of Engineering Amal Jyothi College of Engineering
Kanjirapally, Kerala Kanjirapally, Kerala
ssheikmd@yahoo.co.in georgyabeljohn@gmail.com

Dinanath S. Nair
UG Scholar, EEE Department
Amal Jyothi College of Engineering
Kanjirapally, Kerala
dinanathsnair@ee.ajce.in

Abstract—This paper presents the development and
implementation of dual mode firefighting robot. The
proposed fire extinguishing robot works in either
automatic or manual mode. The operation of robot is
monitored and controlled by Arduino UNO
microcontroller. Complete robot model is simulated
using Proteus. The hardware of proposed fire
extinguishing robot is implemented and tested. A
surveillance camera is mounted on the robot to
monitor the movement of robot under manual mode.
Real time surveillance can also be obtained from the
camera in automatic mode. In automated mode, robot
will detect the fire and move to the fire location and
water will be pumped to extinguish the fire. In manual
mode, user is able to control the whole movement and
the pumping action of robot. Location of fire can be
detected with the help of camera of robot. After the
water is pumped, fire is extinguished to ground level.
Keywords— Robot; Arduino; Proteus; Fire
Extinguisher
I.INTRODUCTION
Fire accidents is defined as an undesirable event which
emits heat, smoke or flame. It has the potential to cause
damage, may require intervention either mechanical or
human or has a cost implication. A fire accident in many
cases maybe a consequence of some human agency
without any intention, or which happens by some natural
causes without human agency. Fire accident is a major
form of accident and can cause a huge number of
causalities because of the danger and risk involved in
rescuing victims out of the fire. Everything a person owns
can be lost in the fire, even life itself [1]. Fire accidents in
industries involves working with combustible materials,
for example petroleum or other chemicals. When
firefighting units engage in such situations there is a high
possibility to loss the life of fire personnel’s. In everyday
life, it is not feasible to always rely on human patrol for
detecting and extinguishing fire at a fire accident scene
[2]. If an automated system is made to patrol the perimeter
for fire accidents, then we can have an early warning
system. This will be very effective in a fire accident in
industries and residential areas where the fire possibilities
are high [3]. In order to achieve this, we must come up
with an idea which can detect a flame, locate it and
extinguish the fire immediately before it poses a threat to
anything around it. For risky situations, it would be
idealistic to send a firefighting robot that could quickly
and efficiently find the fire and suppress it. Effective
monitoring, high speed recognition, and extinguishing of
fire are problems to be dealt with immediately [4]. To
reduce the risk of losing life in such situations,
firefighting robots can be used [5]. The automatic robot is
designed to avoid further spreading of the fire that could
lead to possible human causalities or damage to property.
Firefighting robot will help the fire fighters to do their job
effectively [6].
There have been many attempts made to employ robots in
the capacity of fire extinguisher. Jong-Hwan Kim

978-1-5090-4778-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 2017 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT T ECHNIQUES IN CONTROL , OPTIMIZATION AND SIGNAL P ROCESSING

developed a Sensor Fusion Based Firefighting Robot that
introduces an algorithm developed for an intelligent
firefighting mobile robot to find a fire efficiently by
fusing long wave infrared camera, ultraviolet radiation
sensor, and LIDAR. The robot immediately calculates its
path towards the fire, moves towards it avoiding
obstacles, and ultimately finds the fire. When the fire is
out, the robot returns to its original starting place. [7].
Young-Duk Kim developed a portable fire evacuation
guide robot system that can be thrown into a fire site to
gather environmental information, search displaced
people, and evacuate them from the fire site [8]. Richard
W. White, developed A Fire Fighting System includes a
Vehicle with a plurality of mounted motors, and shield
system, an emergency fire retardant discharge system, and
a modular instrumentation assembly [2].
Our attempt is to develop and implement a fire
extinguishing robot with locally available materials and it
works on an Arduino based fire detection and
extinguishing methodology. This paper presents the
design, simulation, construction and development of fire
detecting mechanism that will detect and extinguish the
fire immediately with a real-time surveillance camera to
observe the fire accident scene. The robot normally works
in automated mode and can be switched to manual mode
using a remote control to manually extinguish the fire. The
robot is fabricated in such a manner that it can protect
itself by always maintaining a safe distance between the
fire and the robot.
of proposed firefighting robot is shown in figure 2.
The robot works in two modes (A) Automated mode and
(B) Manual mode
Automated Mode
In automated mode, the robot is completely automated to
search for the presence of possible flames and obstacles in
the vicinity. The robot moves around and search for the
signs of flame. In the case of the presence of an obstacle
in the path of the robot, it will deviate to right until the
obstacle is clear of its path. This is done using an
ultrasonic sensor attached to the robot. The robot will
search for flames using the three flame sensors placed in
front of the robot. When a fire is detected in the long-
range flame sensor (sensors with range of 400mm) [9] that
is placed on either ends of the robot, the robot will turn in
the direction of the flame and moves forward until the
value of short range flame sensor (center sensor with
range of 200mm) is lower than the cutoff value. When the
value of the center flame sensor is below cutoff value,
then the robot will stop and initiate the pumping action.
Once the pumping action is initiated, the motor for the
pump will be enabled and sprays the water. This is done
until the flame is bought down to ground level. The robot
will keep moving around in search of a possible fire.

II.DUAL MODE FIREFIGHTING ROBOT

The block diagram of dual mode firefighting robot is
shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Block Diagram of Robot

The proposed firefighting robot has three flame detectors

in which two of them are long range sensors and the other
one is short range sensor. The robot also has an obstacle
detector Bluetooth module and surveillance camera. The
Arduino UNO micro controller which is the processing
and control unit of robot receives the inputs from the
sensors and operate the robot accordingly. The flowchart
Figure 2: Flowchart of Robot
 2017 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT T ECHNIQUES IN CONTROL , OPTIMIZATION AND SIGNAL P ROCESSING
Manual Mode
To operate the robot in manual mode, a Bluetooth module
is used. System is connected to smart phones by using a
Bluetooth module. The Bluetooth device can be configured
to receive corresponding serial data for controlling the
robot which is transmitted from the smartphone. An
override button and switch button is configured to switch
between the two modes of operation of the robot. The
movement and pumping action of the robot can be
controlled with the help of the configured smartphone. A
camera is placed in the robot to obtain the actual
surveillance of the fire scene. This can be used to monitor
the movement and working of the robot in automatic mode
and it can be used for controlling the robot and observing
the fire scene in manual mode.
III.SIMULATION AND HARDWARE REALIZATION
OF FIRE EXTINGUISHING ROBOT
The control circuit of the proposed fire extinguishing
robot is modeled and simulated using Proteus 8.8. The
simulation diagram of the robot is shown in figure 3.
Arduino UNO microcontroller is used to control the
process of the robot. Arduino UNO is an open source
physical computing platform based on simple I/O boards
Figure 3: Simulation diagram
Bluetooth module is embedded in this is system to operate
the robot from remote location in wireless mode. Version
2.0 Bluetooth protocol is used to communicate between
robot and the remote. Bluetooth transceiver module is
used as UART RS232 serial convertor module [3]. The
module will operate between an input voltage of 3.3V to
6V. The Tx and Rx lines operate at 3.3V. It supports serial
speed from 1200 to 1382400 bps (default is 9600 bps) and
and a development environment that implements the
processing or wiring language. This is a microcontroller
board based on ATMega 328 [10]. It has 14 digital
input/output pins (of which 6 can be used for PWM
outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16Mhz ceramic resonator, a
USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a
reset button. The flame sensor used in the robot is LM393.
The module can detect flames or wavelength in range of
760nm to 1100nm range of light source [4]. The sensor
and flame should keep a certain distance to avoid high
temperature damage to the sensor. The shortest test
distance is 80cm and the detection angle is 60 degrees, so
the flame spectrum is especially sensitive. The flame
sensor is connected to the analog input pins in the
Arduino. The obstacle sensor used in the robot is HC-
SR04 ultrasonic sensor. Uses sonar to measure distance to
an object it offers excellent range accuracy and stable
readings in an easy-to-use package. The module can work
on 5V dc and a static current less than 2milli-ampere. It
will detect a range from 2 to 450 cm with a precision up to
0.3 cm. The obstacle sensor will detect the immediate
obstacles in the path and deviate the robot from the
obstacle an ultrasonic sensor transmits ultrasonic waves
into the air and detects reflected waves from an object.
have 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and do not have parity. The
Bluetooth module has a range of 30m and working
frequency of 2.4GHz to 2.524GHz. mobile phones with
installed app can be used as remote control. By paring
with module via Bluetooth [11]. This eliminates the need
for development of a separate remote control module. The
robot movement is controlled by two motors. When the
flame sensor detects the fire location, the motors will be
 2017 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT T ECHNIQUES IN CONTROL , OPTIMIZATION AND SIGNAL P ROCESSING
activated and moves the robot in the direction of fire.
Motor Driver IC’s act as an interface between the
microcontroller and the motors of the robot. Motor Driver
IC L293D is a dual H bridge driver [12]. They act as a
current amplifier since they take low current control
signal and provide high current signal. High current signal
is used to drive the motor. This IC contains two in-built H
bridge driver circuits. In its common mode of operation, it
can drive two DC motor simultaneously both in forward
and reverse direction. The motor operations of two motors
can be controlled by input logic at the input pins. 00 and
11 will cause the corresponding motor stop. 01 and 10
will rotate motor in clockwise and anticlockwise
direction. The enable pins corresponding to each motor
should be high to start the operation. When an enable pin
is HIGH, the associated driver gets enabled. As a result,
the outputs became active and work in phase with their
input. When the enable pin is LOW, that driver is disabled
and their outputs are OFF. Figure 4 and Figure 5 shows
the pictures of the developed fire extinguishing robot.
Figure 4: Development Photo Side View
Figure 5: Development photo of front view
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IV.CONCLUSION
A dual mode firefighting robot which works in both
automated and manual mode is presented in this paper.
Arduino microcontroller is used as the processing and
control unit of the robot. The model of robot is simulated
and analyzed using Proteus. The hardware of dual mode
robot is implemented and tested.
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