Fighting Fires with Fire: How to Manage Increasing Wildfires with Drone-Based Aerial Ignition

October 8, 2021, 10:30 AM

**in cooperation with the Purdue Robotics Accelerator

Join the event here.

Talk Abstract:
Decades of putting fires out, instead of allowing natural low-intensity burns, combined with a changing climate that has further dried out our forests has led to the extreme wildfires that are devastating our environment and putting people and property at risk. We have developed an integrated drone system for aerial ignition and forest fire mapping. The drone-base system allows firefighters to remotely ignite backburns and prescribed burns while staying out of harm’s way. By conducting prescribed burns in the wet season, the buildup of dry fuels can be reduced safely, which reduces the risks of extreme wildfires. This technology was originally developed in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln NIMBUS Lab as part of NSF funded research. Since then, the technology has been commercialized by a spinoff company, called Drone Amplified. In this talk, we will discuss the evolution of this technology and how our drone-based technology can reduce risk, lower costs, and perform burns more efficiently than traditional techniques. 

Bio:

Dr. Carrick Detweiler is the Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He co-directs and co-founded the Nebraska Intelligent MoBile Unmanned Systems (NIMBUS) Lab at UNL and also co-founded the company Drone Amplified, which sells drone-based fire ignition systems that are used for land management and backburns on wildfires. His research focuses on improving the robustness and safety of aerial robots and sensor systems operating in the wild. Carrick obtained his B.A. in 2004 from Middlebury College and his Ph.D. in 2010 from MIT CSAIL. He is a Faculty Fellow at the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute and at the Public Policy Center at UNL and is a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. He is currently leading NSF, USDA, and DoD projects focused on developing the systems and software to enable interactions of UAVs with water, fire, and crops.