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 more below)
Data Blanket, Bellevue, Washington
Dryad, Eberswalde, Germany
Ember Flash Aerospace, Santa Cruz, California
Fire Foresight, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Fireswarm Solutions, Squamish, BC, Canada
Flamejackets, Atlanta, Georgia
Flare-X, Consortium, Austin, Texas; Southhampton, UK; Edinburgh, Scotland; Texas A&M Forest Service; AIVE AI Systems
Pyr-Stop, Bristol, United Kingdom
Raindrops, Trondheim, Norway; Provo, Utah
Wildfire Quest, San Jose, California
Aura/Windracers Environmental, Southhampton, UK
Snce the XPrize organizers have given contestants four years from start to final judging, that only seems like a long time in terms of development. Four years goes by quickliy when trying to solve problems of such existential need, though, and when the problems require insights from so many disciplines. Already through its first two years, competition semi-finalists are really feeling the heat.
We will look at one team in this entry, Crossfire, the University of Maryland’s offering. They are featured in Spectrum, the IEEE’s (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) journal under the title, “Drones Tackle Wildfires in XPrize Competition. ” It caught your editor’s attention, and turned him to the University’s web site.
Crossfire’s Academic Backing
Dropping water balloons on fires may look like kid’s play, but turns out to be a surprisingly effective way of dousing a small fire before it becomes large enough to destroy a town, much like the wildfire that engulfed Paradise, California in 2018. Not only was the town mostly destroyed, but Pacific Gas and Electric declared bankruptcy because of myriad legal proceedings and civil lawsuits filed against it for its part in starting the fire.
The University of Maryland team, Crossfire, is one of15 teams to make the XPrize semi-finals.
They share the following grim statistics, showing the tremendous losses incurred by people and the planet.
“In the Western U.S. wildfire frequency has increased by 400% since 1970, burning 6x more land and lasting nearly 5x longer.
“In 2023, there have been 6,118 active wildfires in Canada, which have burned more than 15 million hectares, and also forced nearly 200,000 Canadians to evacuate.”
Oregon saw terrible losses in 2020, with towns like Detroit, Talent, and Phoenix essentially destroyed.
2020 Oregon wildfires destroyed forests, grazing land, and entire towns
Even this level of destruction was small compared to similar destrution in California, Canada, and overseas. We see the consequnces of long-term damage to hillsides, with California now experiences sout-clogged runoff from heavy rains.
UMd’s approach looks beyond water balloons to higher altitude drops with larger payloads. All this will be autonomous, sparing flight crews the hazards of flying into rugged terrain under hazardous conditions.
The team consists of faculty members in mechanical, aerospace, and fire protection engineering, materals science, computer science, and rotorcraft. Advisors include a Captain in The Los Angeles Fire Department, and project managers with expertise in supply chain operation and robotics. Interns in several disciplines round out the team. We will be following this and the other 14 teams as they work toward the finish line this year.
The 15 teams represent an enormous brain trust ready to take on a serious issue. A ;arge part of our future depends on their success.