Throwflame, an American company from Ohio, has put on sale Thermonator, a robot dog that has a flamethrower on its back to spray fire wherever the user wants, who controls it remotely.
The flamethrower is the ARC made by the same company, and is on sale online at a starting price of $699. It works with arc ignition, that is, with a very high temperature electric arc between two electrodes that ionizes the propellant gas into a plasma state, which acts as a trigger to ignite the liquid fuel. It is compatible with petrol and the petrol/diesel mixture.
The dog should be a version of Unitree Go2 produced by Unitree (starting price of $1,600), equipped with a LIDAR, first-person remote navigation (30 meter range), with an autonomy of up to 2 hours.
The ARC robot-flamethrower dog combination that gives life to Thermonator costs $9,420 (with free shipping to the USA), and is advertised on the site as “the first robot dog to wield a flamethrower. This quadruped is paired with the ARC flamethrower to launch fire on command anywhere!”
The uses associated with Thermonator by the company are: fire prevention and control, agricultural management, ecological conservation, snow and ice removal, entertainment and special effects.
The ArsTechnica website highlights that in the United States flamethrowers are not considered weapons in 48 states, excluding Maryland and California. In the latter, however, they can only be used if they have a jet of less than 3 metres.
Thermonator, on the other hand, can spray fire about 9 meters away, so in Maryland and California the population can be said to be safe. In other states, the idea of being able to have a remotely controlled robot around, with good movement capabilities even on unstable surfaces, and with the ability to launch fire at 9 meters, might not make one sleep peacefully.
The export of the Thermonator to other countries around the world is regulated by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which is a United States regulatory system that limits and controls the export of defense and military technologies to safeguard national security.
However, we tried to purchase the Thermonator, and the cart accepted our shipping address in Italy, costing a whopping $1,991 for delivery.
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If the shipment actually departs from the United States, Italian customs should not allow the Thermonator to go any further because it can be configured as a weapon.
In Italy, flamethrowers are considered weapons, unless they are built for industrial or technical use, the use and possession of which are permitted only to workers in that specific professional sector.
