Autonomous AI-Guided Black Hawk Helicopter Tested to Fight Wildfires (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0178637536
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/08/10/237219/autonomous-ai-guided-black-hawk-helicopter-tested-to-fight-wildfires
- Source link: https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/californias-wildfire-moonshot-technology-defeat-100000416.html
"This is the future of firefighting."
> On a recent morning in San Bernardino, state and local fire experts gathered for a demonstration of the early iterations of this new reality. An autonomous Sikorski Black Hawk helicopter, powered by technology from Lockheed Martin and a California-based software company called Rain, is on display on the tarmac of a logistics airport in Victorville — the word "EXPERIMENTAL" painted on its military green-black door. It's one of many new tools on the front lines of firefighting technology, which experts say is evolving rapidly as private industry and government agencies come face-to-face with a worsening global climate crisis...
>
> Scientific studies and climate research models have found that the number of extreme fires could increase by as much as [2]30% globally by 2050 . By 2100, California alone could see a 50% increase in wildfire frequency and a 77% increase in average annual acres burned, according to the state's most [3]recent climate report . That's largely because human-caused climate change is driving up temperatures and drying out the landscape, priming it to burn, according to Kate Dargan Marquis, a senior advisor with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation who served as California's state fire marshal from 2007 to 2010.... "[T]he policies of today and the technologies of today are not going to serve us tomorrow."
>
> Today, more than 1,100 mountaintop cameras positioned across California are already [4]using artificial intelligence to scan the landscape for the first sign of flames and prompt crews to spring into action. NASA's [5]Earth-observing satellites are studying landscape conditions to help better predict fires before they ignite, while a new [6]global satellite constellation recently launched by Google is helping to detect fires faster than ever before.
One 35-year fire service veteran who consults on fire service technologies even predicts fire-fighting robots will also be used in high-risk situations like the [7]Colossus robot that battled flames searing through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris...
And a [8]bill moving through California's legislation "would direct the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to establish a pilot program to assess the viability of incorporating autonomous firefighting helicopters in the state."
[1] https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/californias-wildfire-moonshot-technology-defeat-100000416.html
[2] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/number-wildfires-rise-50-cent-2100-and-governments-are-not-prepared
[3] https://climateresilience.ca.gov/overview/impacts.html/
[4] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-24/can-ai-fight-wildfires-california-is-counting-on-it
[5] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-18/nasa-turns-technology-back-toward-earth-to-focus-on-climate-change
[6] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-05-30/a-look-inside-the-satellite-race-to-fight-wildfires
[7] https://www.shark-robotics.com/robots/Colossus-firefighting-robot
[8] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB270
what is the value? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of removing all humans from the loop? And what is the evidence to claim that the "policies of today and the technologies of today are not going to serve us tomorrow"? Sounds like bullshit to me, someone's got a profit motive to lie.
Re: what is the value? (Score:4, Insightful)
Adding storage ponds and tanks to refill fire fighting aircraft will reduce the amount of time to refill. More short trips is reduces the latency and increases the total amount of water you can deliver.
Obviously people who work on this stuff for a living know best, but just a quick bit of napkin math is making me question if making pilotless drones is really the best solution.
Re: (Score:2)
Fire spreads quickly. If the drones are always on standby (difficult proposition with humans to always have one waiting in the cockpit) waiting to take off immediately with a full load, that can mean the difference between a massive wildfire and a small spot fire that is quickly extinguished. Your back of napkin math is based on total volume of water delivered, but wildfires at the very start should roughly be modeled using a form of constrained exponential growth. Your model might be suitable for a large f
Re: (Score:1)
Aside from whatever actual savings might arise from fewer helicopter dispatchers; I assume that promotionally it's the only sensible strategy. You can always quietly sneak people back into the loop on what is supposed to be an automated system if you need to; but you'll never make "um, maybe use some machine vision to make incremental improvements to what has long been the showy, risky, expensive sideshow of fire suppression" sound like a cool project.
Plus a lot of the potential work in dropping things o
What is the value of a human life? (Score:2)
Seems like every wildfire now, aircraft with humans in them get grounded because some idiot flies their drone into the wildfire area in search of viral video. Either because there's an actual collision, or because a drone was spotted and it's not worth risking a human pilot in that area.
Like this: [1]https://www.cbsnews.com/losang... [cbsnews.com]
If the firefighting aircraft are also drones, we can keep them fighting the fire while we go after the human idiots in the loop illegally flying their drones.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/firefighting-aircraft-collides-with-drone-over-palisades-fire/
Re: (Score:2)
> What is the value... Of removing all humans from the loop?
The point here is not really removing humans from the loop. What you are really doing here is setting a policy for how to handle potential disaster situations and you let an automatic system handle it. Humans make the policies, but then an automated system can go ahead and handle it without waiting for a human to approve it. However, humans still supervise the system and can override it or provide additional instruction or control as needed. If human overseers don't do anything though, the system just goes
Um, say again? (Score:4, Funny)
> within seconds, a satellite dish swirling overhead ...
That sounds really dangerous. :-)
Except for the divers recovering water buckets (Score:2)
> Without deploying a single human
Except for the divers at the lake where it refills buckets. They are needed for the occasional bucket that is ditched during a lift, to recover it and reconnect the rigging.
Re: (Score:2)
If something like this is used as a front line emergency response system, it may not be necessary for multiple trips and refills to even be made. The idea seems to be to detect potential wildfires when they are just small spot fires and put them out before they can become raging wildfires. So, an automated firefighting drone deployed from a potentially unmanned station may make a lot of sense for fast response.
If the fire grows, the rest of the firefighting can be done the more traditional way. Or, also, th
Military flight is thoroughly understood. (Score:2)
Automating aircraft and missile controls is ancient history, the word "autopilot" comes to mind.
Humans tire, stress, need to eat and excrete and unless sitting cockpit alert require scheduling or being on standby alert to begin their sortie. Flying is physically and mentally demanding when managed from the airframe. Meat in the seat limits permitted max G loads limits maneuverability. Meat at the base can be swapped out as expedient.
Remote operators are long proven on combat drones flying much more demandin
Re: Military flight is thoroughly understood. (Score:2)
That's why you hire more people than you strictly need. Lots of people on standby.
Jesus Christ (Score:3)
Don't put a $22m Firehawk in the hands of a black box AI system. I don't need any aircraft fires in my backyard forest.
Imagine reality (Score:2)
Imagine hundreds of conferences to talk about how these futuristic technologies will be deployed to fight fires. Imagine contracts being drawn up, thousands of hours put into RFPs, millions of gallons of coffee. Now imagine the budget being submitted to congress, and with only 5 minutes of debate, the whole project being shuttered.
Swatting to Swamping (Score:4, Insightful)
I predict "swamping" will become a thing. Someone will figure out how to trick these to dump water on their friends (or enemies).
Re: (Score:2)
Or figure out how to arm them. T2 and many AI films were a warning. We're getting closer and closer to big time problems because we're getting too greedy with capabilities and not listening to that warning.