Automatic Forest Fire Monitoring and Measurement using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

[Forest fire fighting is a very important issue in which Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can play an important role. The paper presents the use of UAVs as tools for forest fire monitoring. Fire monitoring is defined as the computation in real-time of the evolution of the fire front shape and potentially other parameters related to the fire propagation. The paper shows how an UAV can automatically obtain this information by means of on-board infrared or visual cameras. Particularly, UAVs with hovering capabilities like helicopters are very useful, as they can move to vantage points of view of the fire. Moreover, it is shown how multiple UAVs can collaborate in fire monitoring activities, allowing to cover bigger fires or to obtain complementary views of a fire. The paper presents results obtained in experiments considering actual controlled forest fires in quasi-operational conditions, involving a fleet of three UAVs.