COLLEGE PARK, Md. — It almost looks like a video game. But this technology - and these flames - are very real. The pallet fire seen here was set on purpose though, as part of a test conducted by students and faculty at the University of Maryland. The team of engineers designed a flying firefighter - a drone that can both detect and suppress wildfires before they get out of control.
"These fires are becoming more intense," Arnaud Trouvé, professor and chair of the fire protection engineering department at the University of Maryland, told WMAR-2 News.
"This uses less resources and less fuel just to actually get to the fire," added Lindon Luu, a student at UMD studying to get his Masters of Science in fire protection engineering.
They've dubbed the technology "Crossfire" and submitted it to a four-year, $11 million dollar competition called "XPRIZE Wildfire." It's a massive monetary prize for the winners, but the real prize would be for the planet. The contest tasks teams from around the world with developing new wildfire-fighting technologies.
"What their criteria is, is that we have to detect suppress the fire in 10 minutes in a 1000 kilometer square area," Luu explained.
The competition seeks to incentivize innovation that could transform current wildfire management approaches. And masters student Lindon Luu and Professor Trouvé say that's exactly what their team's creation does.
"So, currently, for traditional suppression we have to use huge airplanes carrying thousands of gallons of water," Luu told WMAR-2 News. "And for our method we have just a drone which is significantly smaller which uses significantly less energy just to travel the same distance."
Hear from a student at UMD who is working on a drone that is built to combat wildfires
"And we are doing with a much smaller quantity of water that we're going to apply surgically at a small elevation so that the water is not wasted," Trouvé said.
Here's how it works. The drone uses AI and GPS technology to detect a fire from a significant distance, then alerts another drone to fly over with a suppression system designed by Luu. He says, think of it like a grenade: a pin is released, dropping a water balloon, but there's a delay before it bursts to ensure precision and accuracy. You can watch the device in action in the video attached to this article.
"So, if we're able to just stop the wildfires in its early stages, then we can prevent any of those damages and costs from occurring," Luu said.
The project is a combination of aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, and fire protection engineering - a unique major offered at UMD. The team hopes that gives them an edge in the competition.
They're also looking at potential commercial application of their technology in the real world.
"What we're really doing here is actually developing something that is not in the textbook, something that is a new solution," Trouvé told WMAR-2 News.
The semifinals for the competition are this October, If they make it to the finals, they will be held in the summer of 2026.