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Fire Fighting Equipment Development - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Trials

The Brigade offered to help evaluate the capabilities of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or remote controlled micro-aircraft with GPS and Video capabilities for the use as an IMT tool during hazard reduction and wildfire situations. V-TOL, a locally run aerospace company specialising in UAV products and services offered to help out during a planned hazard reduction burn at Swanbank near Ripley on the 29th August. For the trial, V-TOL brought out it's smallest unit, a Warrigal fixed wing UAV with a control team. A low resolution video of the trials can be seen by Clicking Here, however a high resolution version is available on request.

It's small but it can go up for ~60 minutes, travel at speeds approaching 100km/h and out to a range in excess of 5 kilometres. By keeping under 500ft in altitude, the UAV's avoid many safety issues such as interfering with standard aircraft and therefore meeting CASA regulations. The aircraft is made of a polymer foam material with a toughened polymer skin and weighs only 1 kilogram.

The pilot operates using systems that incorporate pre-programmed GPS coordinates, flight plans and live video feed. It also can be manually flown if required. Operators must be fully qualified and extensively trained along similar lines to full pilots.

The Brigade has over the past few years investigated a number of GPS data loggers for use in vehicle and personnel tracking applications. The main aim of the experiments were to assess the UAV as a platform for the quality of live video feed to the IMT control room and GPS data of the fire ground that could be manipulated with existing mapping software such as Oziexplorer.

Setting up the GPS logger.

All crews were briefed on the hazard reduction burn with full mapping and site preparation being carried out over previous days.

The Warrigal Trainer is the smallest UAV operated by V-TOL and only has a small payload capability, approx 50 grams and an area roughly the size of a box of matches; or one small GPS data logger. Larger UAV have greater capacities and can be tailored to suit alternate payload applications.

The teams on the ground commenced the hazard reduction burn.

The burn area was nearly 4 kilometres away from the IMT at the Ripley Valley RFB Station and the UAV took just over 90 seconds to reach the target area. Unless you were looking for the UAV, crews on the ground would not know it was there as the sounds of a fire ground generally drown out the tiny electric motor of the UAV.

Live video feed can be broadcast back into the IMT to assist with understanding conditions, appliance locations, potential hazards, progress of the burn, and safety considerations. If utilised in a wildfire situation, GPS coordinates can be instantly obtained to help identify fire perimeters, water points, escape routes, gates etc.

The UAV could not help with all hazards though as we found out with this local resident.

The technology exists to have a hand held video receiver for crews on the ground to view live video streaming from the aircraft to help with fire management at appliance level.

A screen dump of the live feed with data overlay as tested reveals basic data. Resolution is very basic on the Trainer model as tested.

Future trials will depend upon feedback from Queensland Fire and Rescue Service but the Brigade found great potential with the use of UAV's as a specialised IMT tool and extension of the mapping / planning function; especially with the management of wild fire in remote or unfamiliar territory. Further work is required to identify a more suitable video resolution so that simple identification of appliances via roof branding is achievable. Additional functionality in terms of UAV's carrying radio repeaters is also on the drawing board. Further investigation is also required with GPS tracking and logging technologies, especially those that can integrate with map manipulation software such as Oziexplorer. The final uncertainty would be commercial viability, but that's another story.

A big thank you to the V-TOL crew as well as all of the Ripley Valley RFB Crews who helped on the day.