Image: University of Nebraska
As wildfires ravage the American west this summer, teaching robots how to start still more fires might seem like a pretty terrible idea. Nevertheless, that is exactly what a team of researchers at the University of Nebraska's Intelligent Mobile Unmanned Systems Lab (NIMBLE) is doing.The researchers have been tasked with figuring out how to use small drones to intentionally start fires, a technique known as prescribed burning. This is a tried and true conservation technique which helps prevent wildfires from spreading and protect an environment from invasive species.The problem is that the methods used to carry out prescribed burns today (which requires people to travel to the burn spot and use chain-saws, drip torches, and flare launchers) place firefighters directly in harm's way, assuming that the spot that needs to be burned is even accessible to humans on foot. Prescribed burning via helicopter helps get firefighters into tricky spots, but this is also a somewhat risky proposition and the cost of using a helicopter is often prohibitive for most users.The Nebraska researchers' Unmanned Aerial System for Firefighting (UAS-FF) hopes to tackle all these problems at once by keeping humans out of the line of fire while also giving them access to hard to reach spots for controlled burns.The UAS-FF is essentially a run-of-the-mill personal quadcopter which the researchers have outfitted with a basket full of objects that look like ping pong balls. Each of these balls is filled with a flammable liquid that ignites when it hits the ground, allowing the drone pilot to control the fire's perimeter with the necessary precision from up to half a mile away.The firefighting drone is still in its testing phase, but according to the Nebraska researchers they are working with the FAA and local fire agencies to test the technology with the hope of deploying it commercially in the near future.