Over the last several years, drones have graduated from being primarily used by the military as a spy or hunter/killer platform to being employed by everyone from corporations to civil authorities. What are they up to? They do everything from delivering packages to crime fighting. Now, a group of engineers from UNL’s Nimbus Lab is developing drones that can be used as a tool to help firefighters gain an edge over the ever-increasing wildfire epidemic that seems to hit every summer across much of the US.
Sebastian Elbaum, Dirac Twidwell and Carrick Detweiler have designed the Nimbus team’s Unmanned Ariel System for Fighting Fires (UAS-FF) to fit into a backpack and can be deployed into pre-programmed specified areas or remote areas firefighters have trouble gaining access to in order to initiate prescribed burns, which help to slow or inhibit the spread of wildfires.
To start the prescribed fire, the arson drone uses Ping-Pong-like balls that are filled with potassium permanganate, which drop down a chute where they are then injected with liquid glycol before being released onto the ground where a chemical reaction takes place and ignites into flame.
So far, the team has been successful using their UAS-FF in an indoor setting and are working closely with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) as well as firefighters in an effort to ‘field-test’ their drone sometime in March of next year. As for the future, Nimbus Lab is looking for funding that will help further develop the drone with an advanced sensor suite as well as give it the ability to work in swarms. Arson drone swarms–that can’t end badly. This is however one of the great, practical approaches to drone use. Keep sending us great drones stories with applications like this that you find.
