Data fusion and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for first responders

Autonomous Firefighting Inside Buildings by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

“…The challenges include control and estimation of the MAV state, interior motion planning and exploration, window and fire detection and position estimation, and fire extinguishing. One of the main contributions of the system lies in precise control for flying through relatively small windows, and also for precise spraying of fire-extinguishing agent into a small opening 14 https://youtu.be/a-VsVQcMLuQ 15 http://www.fire-defender.com/en/bonpet-3/1465-2 16 http://mrs.felk.cvut.cz/projects/dofec representing the fire, using multiple sensory data to increase reliability. For this, we have presented a novel multi-layer control pipeline that further enables precise localization and stabilization in an open space around a building, inside rooms with obstacles, and also with a smooth transition between these two environments (with GNSS and GNSS-denied).…”

“…Based on our results in the competition, the proposed autonomous system was selected to be the core of an industrial firefighting MAV system using fire-extinguishing capsules 15 . This system makes it necessary to hit the fire directly, meaning that it requires reliable techniques for locating, approaching, and aiming precisely at fires.…”

“…Operations in places that are in the proximity of a source of radiation, such as the interior of a nuclear power plant, have to be planned with limited exposure time of human workers. The assistance of autonomous MAVs is therefore valuable in localizing the source of radiation [14], or in finding survivors [15], without risking prolonged exposure of human rescuers.…”