A 'Roomba for the forest' could be SoCal's next wildfire weapon

BurnBot is a huge, Zamboni-like vehicle that executes precisely controlled burns of flammable grass alongside buildings and roadways.

It’s designed to create fire breaks — lines of charred land — that keep flames from spreading.

When plants do grow back, instead of invasive, combustible grasses, it’s typically native, more fire-resistant vegetation.

The giant, remote-controlled vehicle — somewhere between a tractor trailer, a tank and a Zamboni in appearance — slowly rolled across the dry, brittle grass growing between the tangle of freeways making up the 101 and 23 interchange in Thousand Oaks.

Inside the beast, fire churned. And as it rolled over the land, that fire incinerated any brush it encountered, leaving only a thin smoke cloud billowing from the top of the machine, some flash