Bath company leading global fight against wildfires
Optect is hoping to win an $11 million prize for its work
As the weather truly heats up across the West Country, we're hearing how a company based in Bath is leading the global fight against wildfires.
Optect, which calls itself a fire detection company, has made it into the final 30 of a worldwide competition to design the best autonomous response to a wildfire. The winning design will be awarded $11 million dollars to make it a reality.
Working with another company Sonic Fire Tech, the firm is attempting to design a response whereby a fire would be detected by special technology attached to rapid drones, which would then deploy so called "robo-dogs" to extinguish the flames using powerful sound waves, meaning a supply of water or firefighting powder is not necessary.
The competition, run by XPRIZE WILDFIRE, asks groups to design a system which could detect a fire anywhere within a 1,000km area and then put it out, within 10 minutes.
Alex Hudson, chief executive of Optect says previous XPRIZE's have asked for designs to combat giant oil spills, commercialise space flight or make hypersonic trains.
"This competition isn't looking for those existing solutions," he said.
"It's looking for the next generation of products and technologies, or a combination of existing technologies, that make something possible that isn't currently possible."
Optech, Alex says, is already the world leader at making devices that can detect fire from a distance, but they are looking to dramatically expand their capability.
"We've extended the maximum range...from around 90 metres to 500m...and so we're going to build another edition of that technology with even greater range, for this challenge."
Robo-dogs
When it comes to putting the fires out, the Optect CEO tells us partners Sonic Fire Tech already have a prototype device which can extinguish flames with sound.
"At the moment the solutions involve fluids of some sort, so water, or fire retardent (or) some sort of foam," he said.
"The issue you have there is if you don't put out the fire on your first run with whatever aircraft you're using, then you have to go back and refuel, come back and by the time you come back the fire's grown again...
"They (Sonic Fire Tech) have demonstrated that they can put out a fire using infrasound waves.
"What that does is it vibrates the oxygen in the air and it means the fire can't use that oxygen and effectively the fire goes out through lack of oxygen.
"They've already shown that they can put out a small fire from several metres away using this infrasound technology and that it scales up. So they just need to build bigger prototypes and then they can put out larger fires using infrasound."
Geoff Bruder, an ex-NASA engineer and developer of the sonic fire suppression method, says: “Our technology can continuously suppress fires for as long as battery power is available without any refuelling or resupply, a potential game-changer for remote area fire suppression.”
As wildfires contribute to up to 20 per cent of global carbon emissions and their severity increases, Optect says deploying the most innovative technology to combat this issue is crucial.
If you want to find out more about Optect and the competition, you can do so here.