FireSwarm

Being a Dutch research project, FireSwarm strives to develop a swarm of affordable, autonomous and small unmanned aerial vehicles that can be used to monitor and detect fire in large natural areas.  The project is aimed at the Noor-Holland dune areas, where fires have led to a lot of destruction in the past years. Dune fires spread very fast and are extremely difficult and dangerous to track down from the ground.

Project FireSwarm is developed to aid in the search and rescue of fire, particularly in the dune areas. The project makes use of cheaper, smaller drones that offer several advantages. For example, a swarm of small drones will be able to cover more ground compared to a single UAV. A swarm is highly scalable, which means that more drones can be launched depending on the size of the area. Moreover, small drones cause less harm in case they crash.

The drones should be capable of flying in a swarm, and function as a network, allowing robust communication with human users as well as amongst themselves. With the help of sensor fusion, the drones should learn to track and locate smoke or fire from the sky.