• Rachel Covill

A University of Bristol robotics team has won $500,000 in the global XPRIZE Wildfire competition for autonomous drone technology that can detect and respond to wildfires within minutes.

The team is part of AURA Foresight, an international collaboration that demonstrated its system by deploying a fully autonomous swarm of drones to respond to potential fires within 10 minutes across a 270-square-mile wilderness area in Alaska in June.

The technology uses optical and thermal sensors to continuously monitor landscapes, automatically identifies potential ignitions using artificial intelligence, and dispatches flying robots to verify fires before coordinating rapid intervention.

Sabine Hauert, team co-lead of AURA Foresight and professor of swarm engineering at the University of Bristol’s School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, said: “This award is a fantastic recognition of years of collaboration between researchers, firefighters and technology specialists working towards a worldwide challenge: preventing small ignitions from becoming devastating wildfires.”

The team was one of three finalists selected from more than 130 teams worldwide to compete in the final challenge of the $11 million competition, which was launched in 2023.

The winners were announced at the XPRIZE Wildfire Awardee Ceremony held at the New York City Fire Museum on 23 September.

AURA Foresight is a collaboration between the UK-based AURA team, led by the University of Bristol, and Australia’s Fire Foresight.

The University of Sheffield developed the vision detection system with thermal and electro-optical cameras for the drone swarm demonstrated in Alaska.

Dr Georgios Tzoumas, team co-lead of AURA Foresight and senior research associate at the University of Bristol, added: “Our ambition was always to deliver practical, affordable tools that help emergency services detect and contain wildfires before they become major disasters. We are incredibly proud that our research expertise is now helping to tackle a global challenge that could better protect communities, ecosystems and critical infrastructure.”

The consortium works with Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service in the UK and wildfire response experts in Canada and Australia.

The technology is designed to intervene at the earliest possible stage, aiming to contain fires while they are still small and manageable.