2018 15th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control (CCE)

Mexico City, Mexico. September 5-7, 2018

A Conceptual Design of a Firefighter Drone

Alonso Cervantes, Paola Garcı́a, César Herrera, Elizabeth Morales,
Fernando Tarriba, Eduardo Tena, Hiram Ponce
Universidad Panamericana, Facultad de Ingenierı́a,
Augusto Rodin 498, México, Ciudad de México, 03920, México
{0154382, 0182109, 0175004, 0177650, 0147859, 0147891, hponce}@up.edu.mx

Abstract—In this paper, a mechatronic design of a firefighter
drone is presented. Unmanned aerial vehicles have been around
for years,they present characteristics that aloud them to be used
for different purposes. Nowadays, these devices have become
more popular and their application increases rapidly in various
fields. This paper focuses on the implementation of a low cost
device that can help to control a fire. By implementing a
mechatronic device, it is possible to spot a fire on time, and
extinguish it without risking humans lives. It is an emergency
responder device that can assist firemen in fighting high rise fires.
The description of the proposed mechatronic system is briefly
described, as well as experiments that demonstrate its principal
functionality.
Index Terms—Unmanned aerial vehicle, firefighter, hexacopter,
mechatronics
I. I NTRODUCTION
Mexico City is victim of about 500 forest fires every year,
and even though not a lot of people are hurt from these fires
it is important to address the problem because of the different
impacts it represents [1]. Fig. 1 shows the tendency of fires per
state in Mexico during 2017 [2]. As shown, Mexico City is one
of the states with most fires. Unprogrammed propagation of
fire over vegetation can occur at any time because it depends
on weather conditions and human activities. Forest fires cant
be reduced to zero, since traditional production processes
linked to the use of fire will continue to exist, thats why
alternative solutions need to be created and implemented.
Fig. 1. Chart showing the fires per state in Mexico during 2017 [2].
This problem has been tried to solve by sending firefighters
to the fire area, but the city traffic is an obstacle. Firefigthers
arrive when the fire has expanded too much through the forest.
There is a parallel solution used just in cases when the fire is
uncontrollable, it is based on sending a helicopter to pick of
water from the nearest water source (such as a lake or ocean)
and dropping it above the forest but it also takes time and has
elevated costs
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be used for a wide
range of applications, such as surveillance or artistic filming
[9]. In an intention to make this range of applications even
wider, the possibility of implementing a system that can help
control or even extinguish a fire was developed. A drone
(or UAV) has the advantage of being fast, long range and
accessible to locations a human being could not reach as easily.
This work raises the possibility of combining a drone with the
capability to extinguish a fire, giving the possibility for the
user to have fast control of the damaged area for releasing fire
extinguisher loads.
For instance, drones have been used for other applications
in order to assist sudden cardiac arrests, an ambulance drone
carrying a desfibrillator and instructions of different first aid
procedures is now in use [5]. The perfect take in cinematog-
raphy is important but difficult to achieve with a handheld
camera, using a drone with professional cameras onboard
makes it easier for them to achieve the perfect shot [7]. Taking
advantage of the drone accessibility it can be used for difficult
tasks such as military and rescue missions, putting the drone
to this use allows the special teams eliminate the risk of
endangering human lives in these operations [4]. Large terrains
of land and the animals that habit it can be monitored with the
use of a drone so we can study and observe how the climate
affects the area and its habitants [3].
The goal of this work is to introduce a conceptual design
of a drone for assisting firefighters during fire events. In this
regard, we are aiming to lower the number of fires that takes
place, specially in Mexico City, and the affected area. Fires
not only damages the environment, but human lives as well.
Therefore, this project consists on a conceptual design of an
hexacopter controlled remotely. Other drones used for fire

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purposes are being sent to monitor using sensors and cameras,
but they are limited to overfly the area, our proposal focuses on
the direct interaction with the area. Releasing fire extinguisher
bombs we can diminuish the risk area and assist firemen.
The unmanned aircraft is conformed by a frame with six
arms and on each arm a brushless motor that allow the drone to
carry its own weight, a dispenser and the loads. This dispenser
is located below the drone, so it can freely release the loads,
and it is manually controlled with the same input RC device
as the drone. The presence of an extinguisher bombs dispenser
forces to increase the size of the drone, as well as its lifting
capability.
The contribution of this work mainly consists on the capa-
bility of carrying fire extinguishing spheres and release them
remotely with high accuracy over a specific target using a
drone. This work also considers to propose a proof-of-concept
of the firefighter drone.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the related work. Section III introduces the proposal,
describing the fundamentals of the drone, dispenser and loads.
Section IV shows the methdology of the experimentation,
Section V provides preliminary results, and VI concludes the
work.
II. R ELATED W ORK
Based on the development of the drone industry in recent
years, this paper examines the co-evolution of drone technol-
ogy and the activity linked to it.The applications presented
describe the researches and uses of drones to help in daily
activities.
For instance, defibrillation within the first minutes after
sudden cardiac arrest can save many quality-adjusted life
years. Yet, despite enormous investments, healthcare is still
unable to provide this for the majority of patients. Emergency
medical services often have a too long mean response time and
many issues surround public access defibrillation programs.
In [5], automated external defibrillator-equipped drones are
the solution presented, because they are easily deployed and
fast, and have a relatively low operational cost. The principal
advantage is the response time although it is not jet available
for all sectors.
The purpose of the work reported in [6] is to use drones
that fly in a collaborative flight formation to evade targets in
a predefined area. The main advantage is that they can detect
targets and maneuver, even in cases when the targets are not
completely visible through the multiple sensing capabilities.
On the other hand, the disadvantage is that the use of these
drones may not be regulated and humankind could use them
like weapons.Also the project contemplates the use of many
drones in a special flight formation, so the response is limited
to the number of drones used.
In [4], authors focus on the steps that are needed to develop
drones from nice toys to professional tools from photography
and filming applications. They describe what triggers the
emergence of a technology and attracts the needed actors to
unleash its transformative potential.
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Drones have been used for search and rescue mission, as in
[3]. These have eliminated the need for a dangerous rappel at
night by rescue personnel. This drone application allow search
in areas that are not accessible. Unmanned aircraft systems
(UAS) with cameras are useful for searching, observing, and
documenting missions. The main advantage of the UAS with
military purposes is that it can eliminate risking human lifes.
Also the UAS might be useful for equipment delivery such as
first aid kit, guns, water or any other in difficult areas. The
disadvantage is that it can also be used as a lethal weapon.
In [7], authors used a drone to study the circumstances
the climate have over some biological phenomena like the
migration of some animals and flowering. They flew the drone
over a landscape to take images of the plants phenology, to
observe the transition of spatial scale during some events.
These study observe the forest phenology during the events
with a climate change and how the landscape adjust to survive
the climate change.
What makes unmanned aircraft remarkable is their great
flight capability. Drones have stable flight, and they can hover
and perform different acrobatics in the air. In this regard,
comparing previous applications with our proposed firefighter
drone, the main advantages are listed as follows: (i) the time of
response is less than a common fire department emergency, (ii)
the fireman lives risk reduces because it is controlled remotely,
and (iii) the forest fire is controlled with the extinguishing
loads, so the forest loss decrease as well as environmental
impacts.
III. D ESCRIPTION OF THE P ROPOSAL
In this section, we describe both the conceptual design of
the proposal and the prototype.
We propose an hexacopter drone with a lifting capability
of 13 kilograms, which was developed and built. It alouds to
carry loads able to extinguish fire in a 10 square meter area
and releasing them in an specific area.
The black box diagram shown in Fig. 2 considers the model
of the system as an input-output design, without describing the
internal components. Thus, this diagram represents the main
functionality of the proposal.
Fig. 2. Black box diagram of the proposal.
For the implementation of the drone, we selected the
components according to the project purposes. The essential
components were the flight and motor controllers, motors,
transmitter and receiver, propellers, and battery.
We developed a hexacopter controlled by a wireless trans-
mitter and receiver linked to a GPS system. The loads are
released via a dispenser designed to maintain the center
of gravity of the drone stable when it loses weight. This
dispenser is actioned with a servomotor controlled with the
same transmitter as the drone. The drone is an hexacopter
aircraft that works with brushless motors and is controlled by
the DJI NAZA M-Lite. The communication system used is
the RC TGY-I6, a 6-channel radio transmitter and receiver, as
shown in Fig. 3. This block diagram, allow us to model the
internal parts of the system.
Feedback is delivered to the user by a display linked to the
RC and other sensors installed on the drone. These sensors
include a temperature reader and a GoPro camera, as well as
the built-in sensors on the NAZA (altimeter, gyroscope, GPS).
The weight of the drone with the payload is about 7 kg,
considering two extinguisher bombs (each one with a weight
of 1.5 kg). We considered a security factor of 1.2, rounding it
up to 8.5 kg. For the design and configuration of the drone we
considered internal factors such as motors power, propellers
and the type of battery, and external conditions, that affect the
flight, like the changes on the atmosphere conditions during a
fire.
The density of the air at ambient temperature (20 C) is 1.204
kg/m3, but at warmer air conditions, the density decreases.
Assuming our drone will fly at temperatures that can reach
1000 C, the density drops to 0.25 kg/m3. We calculate the
extra lift that would be needed for the drone to keep stable.
For this analysis we used Archimedes Principle, so we
could know the extra weight the drone needs to carry up. We
determined that the drone needs to displace 41 percent more
volume on warmer air. The total thrust of the hexacopter drone
with the selected brushless motors is of 13 kg, that perfectly
matches with our requirements. Having multiple rotors allow
managing engine failures, increase the total payload and also
provides more stability to the drone, which may be especially
useful at the moment of releasing the loads because during
this point the mass of the drone changes significantly.
Fig. 3. Block diagram of the proposal.
IV. E XPERIMENTATION
It was necessary to calibrate the engines with the control to
handle all of them at the same speed. After that, the control
was programmed with the servo to release the load at the
desired moment, this load is released with the help of a switch
from the remote control. Finally the drone was ready for the
flight trials and testing.
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A. Protocol
For the experiments and flight trials, a protocol was consider
for safety and better manipulation of the UAV:
1) Insert the extinguishing spheres into the dispenser
2) Verify transmission of the camera
3) Turn on the drone
4) Verify communication with the dispenser control
5) Lift the drone
6) Control and guidance at the desired place
7) Take an initial image capture of the fire
8) Release of the capsules
9) Take a final image capture of the fire
10) Keep the drone in the fire area to observe the situation
11) Return the drone to the user’s place
B. Measurement tools
Some measurement tools were used to validate the response
and results during the testing of the release of loads during
the UAV flight. NAZA software was used to calibrate flight
controller. On the other hand, balloons and dead load were
implemented to simulate the weight of extinguisher spheres.
Quantitative results were obtained by the implementation of a
GPS, a camera and altimeter.
C. Evaluation metrics
The dispenser response time when activated remotely was
timed and established by the following equation (1). To
identify the error between the specific area of the fire we want
to extinguish and the area in which the load was release, (2)
was employed.
P
(response time dispenser)
response time = (1)
samples
(distance from the desired point to drop point)
error = (2)
distance from the desired point
The trials were focus on observing the operation of the
drone. The power control lever of the radio control was halved
so that the motors were at half power, the drone was raised to
a minimum height of one meter, once reaching the maximum
height that was one and a half meters, forward and backward
routing tests were made to see the drone’s operation if it was
balanced and to know the scope of the radio control with its
receivers.
The first experiment involved the operation of the dispenser
coupled to the drone, the servo was connected to the receiver
of the radio controller and activated remotely. The test con-
sisted on carrying out a balloon and then a dead load, which
simulated the size and weight of the load of an extinguisher
sphere.
The next experiment was to raise the complete prototype,
to the necessary power of the motors to be able to reach a
height of three meters, and likewise observe if at the moment
of operating the dispenser the drone could lose his its stability.
Once the three meters were reached, the steering exercise was
carried out, bringing the drone forward and backward. The
power was gradually and progressively increased observing
the behavior of the drone at the time of rising.
Once the drone and dispenser were stable at the flight, an
area on the ground was marked with tape to highlight the
surface in which we wanted to release the load.
V. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
First, the prototype was implemented, as depicted in Fig.
4. As noticed, the drone is a hexacopter with the dispenser
attached under the frame, and the spheres can be loaded in
that dispenser.
Fig. 4. Prototype of the conceptual design proposed as a firefighter drone.
After that and during the test, different size of propellers
were used to determine the ones who give more stability at
flight. Our prototype better adequates to 8in propellers. The
followings are results of the tests.
• The response time of the servo when activated by the
radio control was almost immediate. The dispenser was
opened to release the load in a vertical direction and the
mean of the sample gave us a response time of 0.95 s.
• The covered area of the loads vs. the height reached of the
drone is shown in Fig. 5. During this test the relationship
between the height of the drone and the area that could
be covered by it was observed. With more elevation of
the drone, the area increases significantly.
• The percentage of power used vs. the height (cm). The
results shown in Fig. 6 indicate us using the power of the
engines at 70% the drone would reach 30m in height, but
for safety during the experimentation part we flought 3m
which corresponds to 40% of power.
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Fig. 5. Flight height vs. area covered by the loads.
Fig. 6. Power used vs. the elevation of the drone.
VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper aimed to introduce a conceptual design of a
drone for assisting firefighters during fire events. Drones are
used in various areas such as search and rescue, security,
surveillance, science and research. The implementation of a
drone as a firefighter opens new areas of study and improves
quality of life. Our proposal is different from other ones
related, because it is a low cost solution, that allows not
only overfly the damaged area, but also interact with the fire,
controlling it and serving as a firemen assistant.
With the results we obtained from the experimentation, the
objectives can validate so that the drone reach the desired
height, the drone maintained the stability at all times of the
flight and finally the area that covered the load was the correct
to be able to control a fire.
For further implementation, we are working on determining
which is the minimum distance required between the drone
and the fire. This information can be obtained by monitoring
temperature of the fire and the one supported by the UAV.
In addition, we are considering for a second iteration of the
prototype to ensure control stability.
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