Robohub.org
 

Carrick Detweiler: Micro-UAS for Prescribed Fire Ignition | CMU RI Seminar


by
22 January 2017



share this:

Link to video on YouTube

Abstract: Unmanned Aerial System (UASs) are increasingly being used for everything from crop surveying to pipeline monitoring. They are significantly cheaper than the traditional manned airplane or helicopter approaches to obtaining aerial imagery and sensor data. The next generation of UASs, however, will do more than simply observe. In this talk, I will discuss recent advances we have made in the Nimbus Lab in developing the first UAS that can ignite prescribed fires. Prescribed fire is a critical tool used to improve habitats, combat invasive species, and reduce fuels to prevent wildfires. In the United States alone federal and state governments use prescribed burns on over 3 million acres each year, with private land owners prescribing even more. Yet this activity can be extremely dangerous, especially when performing interior ignitions in difficult terrain. In this talk, I will discuss the history of this project and the challenges associated with flying near and igniting fires. In addition, I will detail the mechanical and software design challenges we have had to overcome in this project. I will also present the results of the first two prescribed burns that were successfully ignited by a UAS. Finally, I will discuss automated software analysis techniques we are developing to detect and correct system errors to reduce risk and increase safety when using UASs to ignite prescribed burns.




John Payne





Related posts :



Apertus: a fully open, transparent, multilingual language model

  11 Sep 2025
EPFL, ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) released Apertus today, Switzerland’s first large-scale, open, multilingual language model.

Robots to the rescue: miniature robots offer new hope for search and rescue operations

  09 Sep 2025
Small two-wheeled robots, equipped with high-tech sensors, will help to find survivors faster in the aftermath of disasters.

#IJCAI2025 distinguished paper: Combining MORL with restraining bolts to learn normative behaviour

and   04 Sep 2025
The authors introduce a framework for guiding reinforcement learning agents to comply with social, legal, and ethical norms.

Researchers are teaching robots to walk on Mars from the sand of New Mexico

  02 Sep 2025
Researchers are closer to equipping a dog-like robot to conduct science on the surface of Mars

Engineering fantasy into reality

  26 Aug 2025
PhD student Erik Ballesteros is building “Doc Ock” arms for future astronauts.

RoboCup@Work League: Interview with Christoph Steup

and   22 Aug 2025
Find out more about the RoboCup League focussed on industrial production systems.

Interview with Haimin Hu: Game-theoretic integration of safety, interaction and learning for human-centered autonomy

and   21 Aug 2025
Hear from Haimin in the latest in our series featuring the 2025 AAAI / ACM SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants.

AIhub coffee corner: Agentic AI

  15 Aug 2025
The AIhub coffee corner captures the musings of AI experts over a short conversation.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence