Startup plans to use autonomous helicopter to extinguish forest fires

“When we run simulations, we see that in some cases you have to be there within four minutes,” Brodie says. “In other cases, seven minutes… I think what we’re seeing now is climate change, and we’re seeing fires that require even faster response times.”

The company’s software helps identify a fire and understand its behavior, making strategic decisions about how to drop water or extinguishing agent. It takes into account factors such as whether another helicopter is nearby or how the wind is blowing. “If you don’t take the wind into account, the water could end up near the fire when you drop it,” Brodie says. The software could allow a supervisor on the ground to monitor multiple aircraft at the same time.

Autonomy helps not only with speed but also safety. In the past few months alone, four firefighters have died in accidents in the US and Canada. The technology of autonomous helicopters itself is being tested in many other applications.

Tests show that it works

Last December, the startup partnered with Sikorski, the company that makes Black Hawk military helicopters, to test the helicopter’s ability to find and then extinguish a fire. Another test in May showed how the software could adjust to wind speeds to plan where to drop water.

The technology could be used by some agencies next year. CalFire already has about 200 helicopters that could potentially use the software. (About 40 are currently being used on the Park Fire alone, but once the blaze gets big, they become less useful.) While owning and operating a fleet of helicopters is expensive, catching a fire early has a disproportionately large impact. One study found that a 15-minute reduction in response time to a wildfire could yield billions of dollars in economic benefits for California.

That’s not to say that every fire needs to be put out. Wildfires in the West are often so large these days because all the fires have been suppressed for decades, building up fuel piles. Low-intensity fires are good for the landscape. “Controlled” burns, initiated and managed by firefighters in the right weather conditions, are an important tool. Aero-powered helicopters can also be used in these cases as a backup, in case a fire gets too big. The rest of the time, the goal isn’t to stop a “good” fire, but to stop fires that risk exploding into high-intensity flames that destroy vast swaths of ecosystems and threaten communities.

Climate feedback loop

Fire mitigation is also key to climate change. “The 2020 wildfire season wiped out all of California’s greenhouse gas emissions progress over the past two decades,” Brodie says. “It’s as if every solar panel, every electric vehicle, every power plant, every carbon capture project, all went down the drain because of one wildfire season.” Last year, uncontrolled wildfires in Canada emitted six times more CO2 than the combined emissions of California’s entire economy.

“There’s been a shift in the last five years,” Brodie says. “Fire used to be considered part of natural land use in the global carbon accounting. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the fires we’re seeing are not natural—that they’re caused by humans as part of human-induced climate change. The scary thing is that this is a climate flywheel. The warmer it gets, the bigger and more intense these fires will be, and the more carbon they’ll release. That just keeps perpetuating the cycle.”