Cable Operated Robotic Dronesystem
Fires
ladders CAN’T
reach. CORD
can.
A tethered, dual-drone firefighting system engineered at ETH Zürich. Unlimited flight duration. Autonomous window entry. 60 litres of water per minute — continuously — through a single cable.
Numbers
that don’t
negotiate.
Cities grow
vertically.
firefighting
hasn’t.
Turntable ladders top out around 30 m. Above that, firefighters face 600 °C interiors and equipment that was never built for it.
Battery drones won’t last the fight. Helicopters can’t enter rooms. The window between external water delivery failing and structural flashover becoming imminent is the problem CORD was built to close. A tethered, two-drone architecture with unlimited endurance — so the leader is engaged with the fire for as long as the ground station has power and water.
— 0 solutions.
Two drones.
One tether.
One mission.
A single bundled cable carries power, water and Ethernet — simultaneously.
Ground station on the street feeds the carrier. The carrier manages the tether at the façade. The leader flies into the burning room — hands-free, tethered, precise.
Hexacopter
Carries the nozzle. Enters the building. Flies autonomously toward the flame root with thermal imaging.
Quadcopter
Holds station outside the window. Absorbs the tether’s weight. Manages the hose arc so the leader never feels the cable.
Truck-side
50 V DC supply. 60 L/min pump. Operator PC. One crew member monitors the entire engagement.
From alarm
to suppression,
under a minute.
seconds to engagement
Deploy & Ascend
Arrival. Tether unspools from the ground station. Carrier climbs to the façade, leader follows to the target floor.
Window Entry
Leader identifies a 2×2m window and passes through autonomously. Carrier locks station outside, holding the hose at optimum arc.
Water Delivery
High-pressure nozzle aims at the flame root. 60 L/min continuous. Thermal imaging streams to the operator.
does this.
CORD does.
Nine engineers.
One urgent problem.
The crew
behind CORD.
Companies that don’t just fund the project — they build it with us. From Swiss precision manufacturing to global motion-technology leaders, this is the network that turns research into a deployable platform.
Take CORD from
prototype
to first responder.
We’re looking for partners in fire safety, robotics and vertical urbanism. Visible impact. Corporate responsibility. Early technology access. An engineering talent pipeline of nine ETH graduates.