Swarm vs Fire Project proposes the use of drone swarm to support the tasks of prevention, surveillance, and extinguishing of forest fires. Currently, a business model and a minimum viable product are being developed under the UAM Emprende initiative of the Autonomous University of Madrid.
We performed a first survey to analyze the problems of professionals in the tasks of fire prevention, surveillance, and extinguishing. The preliminary results of this survey are shown in the following infographics:
Then, we performed a second survey to collect their opinions about different technologies that can help to solve these problems. The preliminary results of this survey are shown in the following infographics:
We used this information to propose a concept of operation for applying drone swarms in firefighting activities. The proposed system is a fleet of quadcopters that individually are only able to visit waypoints and use payloads, but collectively can perform tasks of surveillance, mapping, monitoring, etc. We define three operator roles with different access to information and functions in the mission: mission commander, team leaders, and team members. These operators take advantage of virtual and augmented reality interfaces to get the information of the scenario and, in the case of the mission commander, control the drone swarm. The system is described in more detail in this article.
