Aerial firefighting system for suppression of incipient cladding fires

Abstract

Fires occurring at the exterior of high-rise buildings can be hard to tackle using current firefighting technology and tactics. Accessing fires at high floors is difficult, and can often result in delays in fire suppression, which in turn may lead to an uncontrollable fire. This paper proposes a semiautomated system of multiple, aerial robots that can suppress incipient cladding fires in high-rise buildings. Each developed UAV has six litres of pressurised aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) solution, a two degrees of freedom nozzle, a thermal imaging camera (TIC), and an automated algorithm that can efficiently spread the extinguishing material. To maximize payload delivery and minimize response time, we also developed a semi-autonomous firefighting system (SAFS) that compensates for platform movements, wind, and pressure drop in the fire extinguisher. Experimental results support the effectiveness and the applicability of the proposed solution. Dual UAVs cooperate to suppress Class A wood crib fires of size 10A (est. 825 kW) and frontal area of more than one square metre imitating an exterior cladding fire in its incipient stage. In addition, the developed firefighting UAV was used in Challenge 3 of the Mohammad Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition (MBZIRC) 2020, where it delivered the highest amount of extinguishant to façade fires of any participating team.

Keywords: Firefighting UAV, Aerial Robotics, High-Rise Fire Suppression, Exterior Cladding Fires, Semiautonomous Firefighting System (SAFS), Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF)