XPrize for Drones Spotting and Fighting Fires

Dean Sigler Announcements, Autonomous Aircraft, Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

A Firefighting Competition Like No Other Xprize has given us budget space travel, hyper-economical cars, and attempts to replicate the medical functions of Star Trek’s Tricorder.  Now, the XPrize folks have turned their attentions to spotting and controlling wildfires by drones.  This fits well with the Sustainable Aviation Foundation (underwriting this blog) and its concerns about spotting and controlling wildfires at the earliest opportunity. To counter this, XPrize has launched an $11 million comptetiton to, “Protect lives, forests, and the climate: Create breakthrough technologies that detect and extinguish destructive wildfires, enabling a future where people and healthy fire can safely coexist.”  This challenge, promoting autonomous flight vehicles and the ability rapidly identify and extinguish incipient wildfires, initially drew 338 teams.  These have been culled to 15 semifinalist groups. The Semifinalists This worldwide problem drew worldwide interest.  The 15 teams are: Aerowatch of Barcelona, Spain Agni  part of TRID Systems in Dresden, Germany Anduril, in Costa Mesa, California Crossfire, College Park, Maryland (see …

FireSat: Spotting Wildfires Early and Responding Quickly

Dean Sigler Announcements, satellites, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

FireSat may be part of a solution to our world’s growing wildfire problem.  Recent events, such as the conflagrations ravaging Los Angeles, resulted in widespread damage and enormous loss of lives and property.  Spotting fires early on would allow quicker response, and with the appropriate gear, swift quelling of the flames before they became a tragic threat.  Sending information to a fleet of piloted or unpiloted craft, early warnings from Firesat satellites could direct a swift response that would prevent the growth of incipient wildfires. Fifty such low-earth orbiting watchdogs would use their highly-specialized optics to focus on the beginnings of a fire, as small as 5 x 5 meters (16.4 feet x 16.4 feet). Finding Fires Earlier and With Greater Accuracy Juliet Rothenberg, Product Director of Climate AI efforts at Google Research, has helped develop the FireSat program, in response to the hurried evacuation of her home four years ago when a wildfire threatened her neighborhood.  Then available satellite …

Windracers Race to Fires

Dean Sigler Announcements, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Wildfires Are Not Just a U.S. Problem Windracers, a British firm specializing in autonomous flight and swarm technology, is using drones to seek out and extinguish nascent or early stage wildfires. A recent report from the University of Sheffield alerts us,  “Wildfires have become more frequent, larger, and more severe in the United Kingdom. Factors such as land use changes, higher temperatures, drought conditions, and climate change contribute to this trend. In 2022, there were over 44,000 wildfires—a rise of 72% from the previous year.” Sheffield and the University of Bristol  have partnered with Windracers, a British automated aerial delivery company, to seek out and contain wildfires early in their development cycles.  To add a trans-Atlantic link, Purdue University is joining the effort. International Concerns Windracers’ Links to English Universities As noted above, Windracers is working with the Universities of Sheffield and Bristol, combining talents in artificial intelligence and swarm technology. Dr. Lyudmila Mihaylova, Professor of Signal Processing and Control …

Yelling Fire on a Crowded Planet

Dean Sigler Announcements, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

The earth is on fire.  That’s not some Sierra Club hyperbole, but a factual assessment of where we are as a planet.  Your editor has woken (for three days now) coughing and inhaling the smoke and ashes from a small-potatoes, 300-acre forest fire 15 miles away.  The rest of Oregon is suffering far more.  Throughout America and the world, forests, brush lands, prairies and savannahs are being ravaged at record levels. The National Interagency fire Center illuminates the alarming numbers.  “As of this morning (August 14), 75 large active wildfires are being managed with full suppression strategies nationwide. Current wildfires have burned 2,337,468 acres. More than 26,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to wildfires, including 21 complex and 5 Type 1 incident management teams, 578 crews, 1,357 engines, 152 helicopters, and six Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, or MAFFS. Sixty fireline management personnel from Australia and New Zealand are assigned to support large fires in the Northwest Area.”  Note …