Researchers say that instead of humans, drones piloted by artificial intelligence (AI) could soon work together to prevent wildfires.
According to scientists, if a study in the UK proves a success, swarms of up to 30 autonomous planes using AI would be able to spot and put out the flames leading to wildfires.
The research team of firefighters, engineers, and scientists is working together on the research, which seems to be in the testing phase and has yet to be used on the wildfires.
They say it is the first project to use unpiloted drone technology with swarm engineering for firefighting purposes and wildfires.
Although drones piloted by humans are already being used to detect hidden blazes and assess safety risks, this new project aims to use a unique drone with advanced capabilities.
The drones the researchers want to use for this wildfire prevention project are large twin-engined aircraft with a wingspan of 9.5 meters and huge water-carrying capacity. These drones are designed to fly without any interruption from the remote pilots.
It is said that the next stage of the project, Swarm Engineering, is going to create multiple robots to work together in real-world applications.
One of the project partners, Professor Sabine Hauert, from the University of Bristol, said in an interview with the BBC, “When you look at birds and ants and bees, they can do beautiful, complex behaviors by coordinating – and so we take inspiration from that to coordinate large numbers of robots.”
This project might allow the experts to analyze the historical fire data, vegetation patterns, weather trends, and terrains in unprecedented detail and predict potential fire behavior to allocate firefighting resources more accurately.
