Building a smarter forest using drones, robots, and algorithms
April 13, 2012 | Source: The Atlantic
(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Cutting-edge tech — algorithms, robots, and drones — could save lives during natural disasters.
That’s the argument made by computer scientists M.P.Sivaram Kumar and S. Rajasekaran in a recent article in the Journal of Computing entitled “Path Planning Algorithm for Extinguishing Forest Fires.”
The vast majority of forests are destroyed by wild forest fires, and current methods of sylvan vigilance — mainly individual personnel on foot patrol — are grossly inefficient in identifying emerging threats.
Kumar and Rajasekaran argue that deploying robotic systems throughout wooded areas will increase firefighters’ ability to identify emerging threats and more effectively plot the path of a wildfire and then deploy the appropriate resources to the right places. They imagine a grid-based system of automated drones, designed to detect abnormal changes in temperature and relay data back to a command center.
Comments (8)
by Lord Penguin
If the threat can be identified before it spreads past the first few trees where it started, a drone or drone team can be very quickly flown in (with drone stations every hundred miles or so) to stop it before it causes any damage.
by Steve
I thought forest fires were crucial to regrowth and a healthy ecosystem?
by Lord Penguin
With the climate in California the way it is (and the human activity, accidental and on purpose), fires come to often to let the forests stabilize.
Controlled burnings can be (and often are) used in place of “natural” fires to minimize damage.
by GatorALLin
…all the cool flying robots now that communicate with each other… can we fly them like buzzards to smell for smoke (not dead animals) and then radio back pictures, or info….then actually put out the fire if small enough, or caught early enough (like following a lightning strike or camp fire)…In summary they are both the spotters and work together to put out the fire by working together? Just a thought…maybe more important in CA as other areas are not as dry. CA seems hit so hard also by arsonists ….although here in FL we have some of the same problems…just that we seem to get more rain…
by GatorALLin
I always herd that they used towers to spot smoke….can’t we use satellites with heat detection and visual pattern recognition tricks to do this?
by Katherine MacLean (old science fiction writer and research fan
Nothing has worked better than the nose People and animals can perceive the smell of burning wood or burning leaves as distinct and without doubt and whether cold or hot and in the distance of up to a mile far away , in the woods Even a single pail of damp smoldering leaves or campers trash can can be tracked to its source. The machine that can do this is not built yet.and would be too expensive and fragile if built. Now that cigarettes are not smoking up the urban air, detection of starting house fires and starting forest fires could be a job for trained pet dogs, Fire insurance companies would gain by funding the training of dogs whose owners live near inflammable forests
by Lord Penguin
The problem with chemical (smell) smoke detection is that, unless the person/dog/machine is near to the fire, the smoke has to drift to them on the wind. By that time, satellite or tower smoke detection could have already seen the smoke, not having to wait for the wind.
by trakk
we should have done it by now.