Testing the new generation of AI-enabled fire-extinguishing drones

On a rare overcast day in late summer, red-and-white fire trucks pepper a grassy strip of land in the mountains of western Colorado.A persistent buzzing rises and falls as several uniformed staff from the Aspen Fire Protection District huddle around an iPad, watching one of their volunteer firefighters control a massive drone.This first-of-its-kind machine looks like a giant bug.Black and white with propellers attached to four large arms, it's about 10 by 12 feet wide — roughly the size of a small U-Haul trailer.While firefighters have used drones to monitor wildfires for decades, this new product could use AI to help extinguish fires.

Developed by the California-based company Seneca, the drones are designed to work in a swarm.Similar to a small fire engine, five of them can carry 500 to 1,000 gallons of finished fire foam, and firefighters in Aspen reported they were easy to operate."We were just joking that my 12-year-old could fly these things," said Andy Fisher, deputy chief of Aspen Fire.When Aspen Fire officially launches its new drone program, as early as next year, it'll be the first fire department in the world to operate the drones independently.

So far, they've only been used on prescribed burns in California with support from Seneca's staff.Fisher wants to send these drones to hard-to-reach fires, like remote lightning strikes, before firefighters arrive.The city of Aspen, famously home to billions of dollars in real estate, is surrounded by dense forests — like an expensive tinderbox with few evacuation routes for residents and visitors."If we could get it quick, keep them small and attack them while they're smoldering instead of waiting for the wind to pick them up, I feel like that's the most ideal use case," Fisher said.According to Seneca's founder Stuart Landesberg, the drones can bypass steep or otherwise treacherous terrain quickly and have a range of 5 to ten miles — double that if they're empty.Hovering over a fire, they use an AI-supp...