Fire Extinguishing System for High-Rise Buildings and Rugged Mountainous Terrains Utilizing Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

Nowadays, fighting fires in rugged mountainous terrains or in high-rise buildings are both difficult and dangerous. High-rise buildings are containing floors at such a height or position that the deployment of external firefighting equipment and rescue operations may not be feasible or practical. Meanwhile, reaching farms located in a rugged mountainous terrain with firefighting vehicles is often impossible. From this perspective, to meet the need for a fast way to extinguish fire in an area that is hard to be approached by the conventional methods, and to offer the highest level of safety for the public and firefighters; fire extinguishing system is proposed in this paper. The system is structured with six units: Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (QUAV), Robot (Release Mechanism), Automatic Electric_Spring Operated Gun, Fire Extinguishing Ball, Collision Avoidance System, and a Camera. Quadrotor will carry a specific payload and be capable of throwing an extinguishing balls in an area that is chosen by the operator. The proposed system has been implemented, constructed, and tested in an actual scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of our drone in extinguishing fire in its initial stages and of being safe to hover over a fire, drop a fire extinguishing ball, fly back to the firefighter, and hover at 2.5 meters in the air so that it can be reloaded with a new ball without losing its stability.