Autonomous firefighting helicopter may be solution for higher efficiency, safety in battling fires

VICTORVILLE, Calif. (KABC) -- From the outside, it might look like just another Firehawk helicopter. But one might say - it's the firefighting helicopter of the future.

Its designers say this Firehawk can literally take off, pick up water and put out fires -- all by itself without anyone at the controls.

"The first time I was in it...I was like OK, it's very confident in what it's doing," said John Rucci, a pilot.

Rucci was one of the pilots on board for a series of test runs recently conducted in Hesperia.

Even though in theory he could take over control of the helicopter at any point, all of the Firehawk's instructions were being delivered by someone on the ground.

The technology is designed by a company called Rain in coordination with Sikorsky, the helicopter manufacturer. The goal is to find new ways to more quickly respond to fires.

"The hard reality is we need a lot more rapid response resources than we currently have right now," said Max Brodie, CEO of Rain.

"With humans, you still need to get to the helicopter, you need to receive the notification," said San Bernardino County Fire Chief Dan Munsey, who was on hand for the series of demonstrations.

"Let's just take a fire that was called in via 911...this could respond minutes, even five minutes quicker than a manned aviation could." Munsey said. "It could make all the difference in the world. Fires are going to double in size about every four minutes."

They say this aircraft is completely autonomous - meaning the person delivering the commands isn't flying the aircraft but rather inputting mission commands. The computer takes it from there. They say it doesn't just fly the aircraft by itself, but it can also look for fires by itself.

"This aircraft has a thermal sensor on board...that is scanning for the fire," Brodie explained.

The computer also figures out how to best attack a fire.

"Is it a line drop? Is it a spot drop? How do we factor in the real time wind conditions to be sure that when water is released, the impact of the wind ensures that it actually lands on the fire, not 100 feet left or right," Brodie said.

On the day Eyewitness News was in the high desert, it was just too windy at high altitude for the Firehawk to get in the air safely. But even on days with less wind, they say this autonomous helicopter can make much more accurate water drops than a traditional human pilot

"It reacts at a frequency higher than what a pilot can do," Rucci said.

They say this technology will also reduce the workload on a human pilot, making the mission that much safer.

They brought up the tragic mid-air collision in Cabazon nearly two years ago, when two firefighting helicopters collided, killing three people.

"There's so much that autonomy can bring immediately to help improve the safety of today's existing operations," Brodie said.

They didn't talk about how much this helicopter really costs and they say we're probably still years away from them being put into actual use.

But with fires getting bigger and more devastating, they say the time to start using this technology is now.

"There's a pattern here that is tracking with what is coming in the decades ahead with climate change that we need to be prepared for. We need to be investing in new technologies and tools that help us coexist with climate change, and now is the time to try that," Brodie said.