10. 07. 2023 | Kristýna Bezděková

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American company specialising in flamethrowers Flamethrow is taking pre-orders for a hot new product, their latest flamethrower fitted with a robotic dog.

Throwflame is offering four types of flamethrowers for sale, and they’ve equipped their latest ARC Flamethrower with a quad rail mounting interface that allows it to attach to just about anything, including a four-legged autonomous robot. Thus the Thermonator was born.

The ARC Flamethrower is a modular electric flamethrower that shoots a gasoline or gasoline-diesel mixture flame up to 10 meters. The ignition is provided by a plasma arc, the tank lasts for 30 seconds and the Thermonator can handle 45 minutes in action. It can be operated remotely and is backed by a lifetime warranty. The type of robot is not specified by the manufacturer, but according to the photos it is the Unitree GO1 from the Chinese company Unitree Robotics. Their quadruped is navigated by artificial intelligence, can walk and run up and down stairs, and even understands sit and lie down commands.

The Thermonator is said to be useful for weed burning or controlled burning to prevent forest fires, but the manufacturer doesn’t list any of this on its website. The product is expected to hit the market later this year, so let’s be surprised what impact it will have in the US. Since the price of the standalone ARC flamethrower is $699 and the robot comes in at $2,700, the final price could be between three and four thousand dollars.

The spicy part of the whole thing is that the Chinese manufacturer of the four-legged robot joined the global call against arming autonomous robots last year, which we wrote about here.

Source, photo: throwflame.com

Kristýna Bezděková

Kristýna is a student of marketing and communication in an undergraduate program. She writes and translates content into the Czech language