After 3 years of development, students in the Oaks Christian School Institute of Engineering debuted the HydroRover—a fully remote-controlled firefighting robot designed to operate inside residential homes.
The launch of the rover comes on the heels of the devastating fires that affected the Pacific Palisades community nearby, as well as the communities of Altadena, adjacent to Pasadena, through the Eaton Fire this past January.
Engineered with mobility and safety in mind, the HydroRover fits through standard residential doorways and can be navigated remotely, allowing it to enter dangerous environments where human access is limited or unsafe. The robot uses FLIR optics to deliver targeted compressed air foam to the source of a blaze, helping reduce fire spread and potential damage.
This student-built innovation addresses a critical gap in fire response capabilities, especially for volunteer fire stations, many of which lack the equipment or personnel to enter burning structures safely.
The inspiration behind this project was to assist firefighters in rural areas. The fire department has a protocol for going into buildings, two in/two out. Meaning, in order to send anyone into a burning building, they need two people on the outside to be able to send two inside. The ratio can increase of course, three in, three out, for example, but they can't go less than two.
“This poses a unique challenge for volunteer firefighters in rural areas (which turns out to be most of the United States) because they need four people plus all their gear before they can move into a building,” shared rising senior Tyler Lehman, one of the student leads on the project. Co-leads were Ivana Malenkovic and Greyson Westmore.
“This can be a big challenge for a volunteer force because they're coming from their day-to-day jobs and lives. So, the goal of our robot is to be the first one in the building. Something that can be easily put in the back of a pickup truck and sent in with no gear, or even the need to open a fire hydrant,” he expounded.
There were two main teams: the chasse team and the software/hardware team. Lehman was on the software team, and they experienced a lot of setbacks. The learning curve was probably the hardest part because they inherited designs and systems from previous years' classes, so they had to familiarize themselves with what they had to work with before improving upon it.
The HydroRover offers a safer, more efficient option to support interior firefighting in high-risk scenarios. The project reflects the growing focus at Oaks Christian on real-world problem solving through STEM education.
“I love this invention because it seriously has real world applications. I am making a final version of this project as my senior capstone. I hope to bring it to the field and help a lot of people. I think firefighters could really benefit from this project and I think it could be integrated into a fire department seamlessly,” Lehman said.
Students collaborated over several academic years to design, test and refine the HydroRover as part of the school’s vehicular engineering program, applying classroom principles to build a tool with meaningful impact.
Engineering Institute Director Greg Smith, who lost his home and business in the fires of 2020 in the Sierras, said, "I knew we had to do something to use the loss to motivate innovation and solutions for our communities. I just used the skills and resources we had in the school to enable our students to make a difference."