It’s a hot summer night and there’s another forest fire in Greece. This one has already burnt out 1000 hectares of a Mediterranean forest some 80 kms north of Athens. Five hundred firefighters and volunteers have been fighting the flames for nearly 20 hours. Thanks to their efforts, the fire has been brought under control but it is far from out.
In the midst of all the haste and the chaos, there’s a German engineer with a strange flying robot. He’s Airrobot Managing Director Burkhard Wiggerich and he explains how the robot works: “With this system, in a few minutes, we can reach a height of 100 to 150 meters and survey the whole location.”
“We can locate the worst of the blaze and also where the emergency services are. If they’re in the vicinity, we can decide how to direct them straight to the spot,” he continues.
The flying robot is called a ‘microdrone’. Its sophisticated cameras allow it to see from above, where humans can´t always see – to the very heart of the forest fire.
It can in this way give valuable information to the firefighters, helping them to better carry out their dangerous task.
Chief Fire Officer of Central Greece, Nickos Floros, says the microdrone has already proven useful: “During the night, planes and helicopters are forbidden to fly over forest fires. But this robot can see where our firefighters can´t go, for example, on the other side of a burning slope, as is the case tonight.”
“It can give us a quick glimpse of what is happening at the very heart of the fire, so we can decide what are the best options.”
The microdrone is the result of a European research project aimed at providing a flying tool to help manage a crisis situation from above.
It weighs less than 1.5 kilograms; it can fly alone for up to around one hour; and it can carrry around 200 grams of material.
Airrobot Managing Director Burkhard Wiggerich says:
“It works with four motors, two that turn to the left and two that turn to the right. This makes it very stable in the air.”
“It’s well equipped electronically, to make the job of flying or controlling it easier. At the same time, it positions itself using its GPS.”
Detecting forest fires is just one of its possible uses. Developers think it could help manage other natural disasters like floods or help control urban riots.
But before all of these applications can become reality, there are some technical challenges to overcome.
Microdrones Project Coordinator Christophe Leroux says: “Some of the failures of the GPS system on the drone have to be redressed. For example, when we’re too close to an obstacle, the drone can’t position itself and it begins to behave erratically and make mistakes. The danger here is that we could lose the machine, or damage it.”
“In the future, what could be interesting is to give these machines more autonomy, or self-sufficiency, so that their operators can concentrate on what they have to do, and forget the technical problems and complexity,” Leroux continues.
That is why computer scientists like German Chunrong Yuan from the University of Tubingen are developing what they call “environment sensing tools”.
31.07.2009
