In Aalborg, Denmark, AI-powered drones detect and monitor forest fires in real time.
Robotto technology was created by a Danish company in 2018. The impetus was the record fires in Greece, Sweden and California, which made a strong impression on the founders of the startup, tells euronews.
After this, the idea of a quadcopter was born, which is capable of taking off and flying autonomously, methodically combing the territory assigned to it. The drone is equipped with a heat camera that sends data to an AI processing unit.
When firefighters respond to a call, they typically use maps that are 12 or even 24 hours old. That is, every time they go on an operation, they need to get the overall picture and, based on it, build a real fight against fire. That’s why the first moments are crucial in fighting forest fires – you need to make sure that the fire does not get out of control.
With Robotto technology, firefighters can get an instant overview of where the fire is, how big the fire is, where the fire is most intense, and then allocate resources most effectively.
However, Robotto co-founder and CEO Kenneth Richard Geipel notes that not all obstacles to drone operation have yet been removed: existing rules EU drones are a problem because in most cases it is not allowed to fly beyond visual line of sight.
The technology is already widely used by the elite GRAF forest fire fighting unit in Catalonia. His employees helped Robotto in testing.
To demonstrate the technology, Robotto flew one of its drones into a small forested area on the outskirts of the Danish city of Aalborg in northern Jutland. Within a few minutes, the drone’s AI determined that a small fire had been lit at the campsite.
Fire fighting is not the only area of application of the innovative technology created by Aalborg University. This year it will be used in Australia to detect and monitor koalas, and in Uganda to prevent poaching.
In Thailand, the system is currently used by the World Wildlife Fund to detect and track herds of roaming elephants and prevent human-wildlife conflicts.
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