Drones and AI: Wildfires are a plague affecting half of Europe and beyond at the height of summer. In forest firefighting activities, civil defence and firefighters are frequently faced with re-igniting fires from hotspots considered already extinguished, especially during the night when activities are reduced. Monitoring these scattered outbreaks requires human-supported technologies to ensure nighttime operations, proper hotspot recognition, and predictive computation of fire resumption.
Inspire is an innovative startup founded in 2017 in Genoa that is developing an integrated system to address these issues. The system includes using UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, commonly known as drones) and an automated drone management platform that can reload and dispatch multiple units over an area. The purpose of the platform-named M.A.R.S. (Multiple Airdrone Response System)-is to acquire data (images, data from sensors, etc.) and process it using previously trained artificial intelligence tools and provide a predictive analysis of which hotspots are most at risk of outbreak recovery, predicting their subsequent evolution and testing various fire attack strategies in real-time.
University spin-off
Inspire is a university spin-off from the University of Genoa, and it was born from the initiative that sees the virtuous collaboration of visionary entrepreneurs and university professors with experience in the target sector of robotic, electronic, and I.C.T. systems. The startup operates in the design, production and commercialization of autonomous robotic systems intended for logistical and operational support of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), commonly called drones, a field in which it holds five national and international industrial patents.
As Alberto Clavarino, Head of Inspire of the commercial part and relations with strategic partners, illustrates, “Inspire has a clear and precise vision of the technical and commercial objectives it wants to pursue, having identified a specific need of the reference market. This is the need to make up for the limited operating autonomy (a few tens of minutes) of the current battery-powered systems with which drones in flight (i.e., UAVs) are equipped. In fact, we have patented the M.A.R.S. platform, designed with the goal of overcoming such limitations and providing automated servicing to drone fleets on specific missions.”
A different platform
“The M.A.R.S. platform differs from all other solutions on the market in that it provides for immediate replacement of the battery pack in seconds compared to inductive charging systems, where the drone has to remain stationary for several tens of minutes on the charging platform. It also integrates the replacement of multiple types of payloads to perform multiple missions and tasks during the course of the planned mission.” A distinctive and peculiar element benefiting Inspire’s entrepreneurial project is, therefore, the high technical-scientific quality and remarkable originality of the project, where academic research topics, often the subject of technology transfer to Inspire, are virtuously capitalized upon, leading to various scientific publications in leading international journals.
Among the universities, research centres and technological poles with which it has been collaborating for several years are the Department of Mechanical, Energy, Management and Transport Engineering – DIME of the Polytechnic School of Engineering of the University of Genoa; the Department of Naval, Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering (D.I.T.E.N.) of the University of Genoa; D.I.M.E.A.S. – Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Turin; the Departments of Agricultural Science and Technology of the Faculty of Agriculture of Sassari; and the National Research Council (C.N.R.).
It shares projects with these institutions on research topics, including Precision Landing, Servicing Scheduling and Battery recharge, which support the entrepreneurial project’s technological development. Inspire has joined the S.O.S.I.A. (Environmental Risk Management and Land Control, Cybersecurity of Critical Infrastructure, Innovative I.C.T. Systems for the Intelligent Factory and Automation) Research and Innovation Cluster, established at the urging of the Liguria Region. In recent months, Inspire has raised about 2.5 million euros through the calls obtained with academic, industrial and institutional partners.
