Robot water blaster
This idea has been brought to life
The Robot Water Blaster was brought to life by animator Chloe Rhodam. She said about the invention,
'I thought that the Robot Water Blaster was a very useful idea to help out firefighters in dangerous situations. I wanted to incorporate the bright eye-catching colours Emilia came up with and also put the invention into a scene as she illustrated - to show how it would be used in an emergency situation. I added a flashing blue light as I thought it might be required when the Robot Water Blaster dashes to where it is needed!'
The robot water blaster was made real in the form of a model. Chloe combined the Robot Water Blaster and the Princess Rescue, designed by Nina age 5, they're a real super hero team!
Emilia and Nina were very Happy to see their inventions made real at our Get North exhibition at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle.
Maker blog entries
The Robot Water Blaster hose is made from a plastic pipe tube. It has a thick wire through it so that it stays in position. I originally used gaffer tape to cover the tubing as it was a similar texture to real hose pipes, however, it started to peel off the plastic tube so I needed to find a different material. I ended up using pipe cleaners, which give the hose a bit of character and make it fun and child-friendly. The end of the hose is a cake icing nozzle and I used optic fibres and clingfilm to make it look like there is water coming out of the spout. The shoes are made from oven bake-able clay, with wooden dowel legs that have rubber tubing around them. The look of the fire inside the house is achieved by a fan blowing tissue paper and sweet wrappers. I used a self build RGB controller kit to control the flickering of the lights and added coloured lighting gels to make them orange. I added a flashing blue light onto the design as I thought that it may need this when dashing through traffic!!