Korean ‘Vine Robot’ Enters Battery Fire Zone Too Dangerous for Firefighters

A lightweight inflatable robot developed in South Korea has completed a reconnaissance mission inside a fire-damaged battery facility that emergency crews considered too dangerous to enter, demonstrating how soft robotics could reduce risks in volatile industrial environments.

The fire occurred in August at a military battery storage facility in South Chungcheong Province. Reinforced concrete walls and automated sprinklers contained the initial blaze, but the building still held roughly 210,000 lithium batteries that had been exposed to intense heat. Officials feared that pressure or contact could trigger secondary thermal runaway and potentially cause explosions.

That danger prevented firefighters from entering the affected area for nearly two weeks. Conventional tracked or four-legged rescue robots were also considered unsuitable because their weight could press against damaged cells. Emergency teams instead deployed a soft “vine robot” created by a research group led by professor Yoo Ji-hwan at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in cooperation with the National Fire Research Institute.

The device advances by using compressed air to unfurl from its tip, extending through confined spaces in a way that resembles a growing plant. Unlike a wheeled machine, its body does not need to roll across the floor as it moves forward. This allows the robot to travel around vulnerable battery packs while applying almost no mechanical pressure to its surroundings.

Specialized personnel operated the pneumatic robot from a designated safety zone behind reinforced blast shields. The machine navigated narrow corridors and provided a visual survey of the facility without disturbing the stored batteries, giving investigators information from an area that had remained inaccessible to human responders.

The deployment comes amid heightened concern over lithium battery fires in Korea. In June 2024, a thermal runaway explosion at a battery factory in Hwaseong, south of Seoul, killed 23 people and destroyed the facility. Such incidents have underscored the difficulty of inspecting and controlling sites where damaged cells may ignite in a cascading reaction.

Officials plan to use data from the latest mission to help develop safety manuals for military depots and industrial battery plants. KAIST and the fire investigation team also intend to submit the reconnaissance data to the Lincoln Program, a U.S. security research initiative led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory.

Kim Yeon-sang, director of the National Fire Research Institute, said researchers are evaluating how disaster robots navigate complex environments and applying operational needs from real fires to technology designed to keep emergency crews out of danger. The successful mission suggests that soft, low-pressure robots could complement conventional rescue machines where even minor physical contact poses an unacceptable risk.