WILD HOPPER: A heavy-duty UAV for day and night firefighting operations

Pablo Flores Peña; Ahmed Refaat Ragab; Marco A Luna; Mohammad Sadeq Ale Isaac; Pascual Campoy

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e09588

WILD HOPPER: A heavy-duty UAV for day and night firefighting operations

Heliyon. 2022 May 31;8(6):e09588. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e09588. eCollection 2022 Jun.

Authors

Pablo Flores Peña^{1

2}, Ahmed Refaat Ragab^{1

3

2}, Marco A Luna^{4

2}, Mohammad Sadeq Ale Isaac^{4

2}, Pascual Campoy⁴

Affiliations

¹ Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
² Drone Hopper Company, Madrid, Spain.
³ October 6 University, Giza, Egypt.
⁴ Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

Abstract

Forest fires are among the most dangerous accidents, as they lead to the repercussions of climate change by reducing oxygen levels and increasing carbon dioxide levels. These risks led to the attention of many institutions worldwide, most notably the European Union and the European Parliament, which led to the emergence of many directives and regulations aimed at controlling the phenomenon of forest fires in Europe, such as the (E.U.) 2019/570. Among the proposed solutions, the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is considered to operate alongside existing aircraft and helicopters through extinguishing forest fires. Scientific researches in this regard have shown the high effectiveness use of UAVs. Still, some defects and shortcomings appeared during practical experiments represented in the limited operating time and low payload. As UAVs are used for firefighting forest fires, they must be characterized by the heavy payload for the extinguishing fluids, long time for flight endurance during the mission, the ability to high maneuver, and work as a decision-making system. In this paper, a new UAV platform for forest firefighting is represented named WILD HOPPER. WILD HOPPER is a 600-liter platform designed for forest firefighting. This payload capacity overcomes typical limitations of electrically powered drones that cannot be used for anything more than fire monitoring, as they do not have sufficient lifting power. The enhanced capabilities of the WILD HOPPER allow it to complement existing aerial means and overcome their main limitations, especially the need to cover night operations. This allows reducing the duration of the wildfires heavily by allowing continuous aerial support to the extinguishing activities once the conventional aerial means (hydroplanes and helicopters) are set back to the base at night. On the other hand, WILD HOPPER has significant powerful advantages due to the accuracy of the release, derived from multirotor platform dynamic capabilities.

Keywords: Firefighting; Forest fire; UAV; WILD HOPPER.