Patent describes using drone swarm to suppress wildfire – Wildfire Today
Researchers performed calculations to determine how many drones would be needed for attacking a wildfire
Diagram from the patent
(This article was first published on FireAviation.com)
The person who was awarded a patent in 2017 for describing a system of drones that could be used to drop liquids on wildfires wrote a paper earlier this year with two other authors that claims to have determined how many drones would be needed for suppressing a small section of a fire.
The patent, #WO2017208272A1, awarded to Marco Ghio, is quite vague and does not supply any technical details. It says that instead of applying fire retardant or water in a conventional manner, a “rain” concept would be used:
Dropping small quantities of firefighting liquid or drizzling it over the fire, and its subsequent spreading on a large area instead of in a concentrated manner. This method, both theoretically and experimentally, is acknowledged as being particularly effective, whereas, on a practical level, it is effectively used in domestic and/or industrial firefighting systems.
Figure 1. (a,b) Representations of the proposed firefighting system based on the use of a swarm of collaborative UAVs. (From the research)
In the United States fire retardant dropped from an approved air tanker is applied at coverage levels ranging from 1 to 9 gallons per 100 square feet, depending on the situation. It is not clear what coverage level “rain” would produce.
Drawing from the patent
The patent specifies that drones would transport the liquid in removable containers. Upon returning empty to the mobile base the containers would be autonomously replaced with full containers, along with a charged battery if needed.
The drones and the other equipment would be transported in standard metal shipping containers which would be strategically positioned. The system would include “a control unit for the coordination of missions, the flight paths to be followed, and the selection of the ideal drop points optimized according to the environmental conditions.”
Details about how all of this would be accomplished are not specified.
The patent and the research paper written by Mr. Ghio, Elena Ausonio, and Patrizia Bagnerini assumes that the cargo capacity of the drones would be 5 to 50 liters (1 to 13 gallons), much less than currently carried by helicopters (up to 3,000 gallons) and fixed wing aircraft (up to 17,500 gallons) that routinely fight wildfires.
Their analysis (below) takes into account wind speed, flame length, the length of fire line to be suppressed, and the dead fuel moisture. It indicates that about 75 linear meters (246 feet) of …….
Source: https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/11/30/patent-describes-using-drone-swarm-to-suppress-wildfire/