Autonomous and Unmanned systems to work with fire fighters in the future?
This post is also available in: 
עברית (Hebrew)
The Arizona fire that took the lives of nineteen members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, was the deadliest single day for U.S. Firefighters since Sept. 11. They were killed Sunday when a windblown wildfire overcame them north of Phoenix.
“What happened was a storm cell came over and sent a crazy gust of wind that blew the fire out- it burned over the crew and a whole town.” said Erin Kimsey, Elk Mountain Hotshots.
A similar tragedy occurred in the 2010 Mount Carmel Fire in Israel, taking the lives of 44 people, making it the deadliest forest fire in the history of Israel.
With the rise of forest fires in recent years in the U.S. and around the world, and with climate change becoming a permanent and unpredictable reality, the need for a new solution is growing. The logical step is to employ the use of Unmanned Autonomous Systems (AUS) and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) instead of people to assess the situation and assist in putting out the fire from the air and the ground, instead of putting firefighters into life-threatening situations, or at least to assist them in their dangerous tasks.
There are currently many such UAS and USV systems available on the market, and they are the next logical step in fire containment.
By – Julia Fridman
