Meet the Firefighter Drone

The Firefighter Drone is a very important figure for everyone's safety. She flies around, covering search and rescue operations and, in case of fire, she will extinguish it. She also does a great job preserving the environment and natural resources, transmitting birds-eye video of a forest fire to incident commanders and mapping hard-hit areas after a natural disaster. With her nozzle-arms she saves the forest and its inhabitants from burning down!

Before her existence, brave and heroic men called fire-fighters were risking their own lives, jumping into flames, to preserve everybody's safety. Then drones, armed with cameras and sensors, arrived to replace them, taking on the responsibility of this serious and dangerous job. Our firefighter hero-drone doesn't need to eat or sleep, and no job is too hard for her. Helping humans and securing safety are among her favorite tasks. What would we do without her?

MIT and Olin College researchers are already working on firefighting drones technology. These unmanned aerial vehicles will help firemen to do their job in an easier and more secure way. Drones are useful when performing expensive or dangerous functions, like facility and utility inspections or aerial photography. Furthermore, systems that track fires are normally not real-time. Alerts and information about fires is usually received from 12 to 24 hours after the fact. Therefore it results being very hard to contain a fire, but these drones would be a cheaper and more effective way to deal with these disasters.

You can find the Firefighter Drone and many other good drones in What's flying there?, our new coloring book that opens up new perspectives for drones applications in the human habitat.