Researchers testing autonomous aircraft, water 'boba balls' to slow spread of CA wildfires

With concerns over a destructive wildfire season growing in California, researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area are testing out a better way to fight back.

Although nobody moves at the speed of a wildfire, the startup Rain is working on a way to potentially knock out the flames before they have a chance to accelerate.

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"And at the end of the day, it's about providing enough speed and force to provide that initial knockdown," says Max Brodie, CEO of Rain.

The company is perfecting software for fully autonomous, uncrewed aircraft equipped to locate, evaluate, and attack emerging wildfires.

Located in the former control tower of the Alameda Naval Air station, the company approaches the challenge with the kind of strategies employed by the military. First, by taking advantage of an existing network of smoke-spotting cameras, already installed in fire zones like the Sierra, then launching aircraft as soon as a suspected fire is detected.

"We have been doing this for decades in a military context all around the world. Flying these drones and autonomous aircraft. This is real technology," says Brodie.

The team is working with collaborators including Sikorsky, designer of the famed Black Hawk helicopters. Adapted as a firefighting platform, the aircraft can deliver water to target areas with speed and agility. But developers also wanted to make those fire killing airdrops more efficient as well.

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That's because a percentage of the water dropped on wildfires may not make to the target. With intense heat and high winds, it can be blown off course, or into a mist, that simply disappears into the air.

To help solve the problem, Rain ultimately turned to engineering students at Stanford University. Team members Chris Copans and Kristie Park say the process began with some out of the box brainstorming.

"What if we try to do something like water, but boba balls or something like that? What if we did something like the consumable water packets that runners use in marathons? Can we use like a snow cone machine or something like that?" says Park.

What they came up with were transportable, biodegradable, highly controllable, water pellets. Made with a machine normally used to wrap food snacks. After testing them with shake tables and pressure gauges, it was time for the big drop, off a 32-foot fire tower.

"We loaded payloads of our pellets as approximately 25 each in a trapdoor bucket extend it out the side of the tower, and then we released them and tracked the dispersion of those pellets as they fell," says Copans.

He says the beta tests were a success.

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Back at headquarters, engineers at Rain are continuing to perfect the software that could ultimately help guide the Black Hawk helicopters to their target. And perhaps someday deliver a payload of Stanford water pellets or similar technology.

For Max Brodie is would be the fulfillment of a mission driven by watching the effects of a destructive wildfire as a child.

"Then going into the 2020 wildfire season where the skies turned orange. I was convinced that this was the right time to build this technology and that we could do it," explains Brodie.

An autonomous airforce designed to revolutionize the way we fight wildfires. And besides reaching them quickly, engineers at Rain believe their autonomous strategy could be safer, keeping humans away from the dangerous epicenters and rugged terrain.

MAP: Track wildfires across California

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