XPRIZE Wildfire’s independent judging panel has selected 29 Qualified Teams from around the world to advance to the next round of the XPRIZE Wildfire Autonomous Wildfire Response track.
The XPRIZE Wildfire Judging Panel is composed of external experts who possess the subject matter experience to evaluate, verify, and validate the teams' solutions. It includes professionals in fire science and management, fire aviation, uncrewed autonomous systems, remote sensing, engineering, and more.
Each team submitted a Qualifying Technical Submission, a written proposal detailing the teams’ solutions to the competition challenge and the proposed plan for meeting the competition goals. The judges independently evaluated and rated these submissions before convening to determine which teams presented the strongest and most viable solutions.
This cohort of interdisciplinary teams will equally share a $750,000 milestone prize purse.
MEET THE QUALIFIED TEAMS
Aerowatch | Barcelona, Spain – Aerowatch focuses on the rapid detection of fires using multiple data sources, including aerial and ground sensors, crowdsourced information, fire ecology, and historical data. Once a fire is detected, an autonomous network of unmanned systems is deployed to reach the fire within minutes and deliver a suppression agent. The network is continuously active in the territory and updates relevant data to remain prepared for any emergency.
Agni | Dresden, Germany – Team AGNI brings together the know-how of TRID Systems and Wildau UAV. TRID focuses on autonomous UAV systems and data analysis, while Wildau UAV is experienced in designing, manufacturing, and integrating UAVs. Their system comprises two types of autonomous UAVs working in a coordinated swarm. The first type includes fuel-powered jets designed to cover vast areas. These are equipped with RGB and infrared cameras, coupled with AI for fast and precise detection of smoke, fires, and other environmental factors. The second type consists of large copters capable of carrying substantial loads, such as water, for direct delivery to the detected fires.
Anduril | Costa Mesa, U.S.A. – Anduril is a defense technology company bringing Silicon Valley engineering talent and experienced veterans to pioneer disruptive solutions for the most challenging missions. Anduril plans to leverage the Roadrunner solution–a reusable vertical take-off and landing autonomous air vehicle–to meet the unique requirements of the XPRIZE Wildfire challenge.
BAMF Drones| Mooresville, U.S.A. – BAMF Drones uses fixed-wing VTOL UAVs to solve speed, range, and payload barriers for fighting wildfires. Advanced sensors and autonomous guidance enable large flights of small, inexpensive drones to carry effective payloads to targets miles away. While distributed networks of pre-staged standalone squadrons-in-a-box allow rapid response to incipient stage wildfires.
BlackBee Robotics | Blacksburg, U.S.A. – BlackBee Robotics is a start-up engineering firm with a mission to provide innovative robotics solutions for a variety of industry problems. The team’s FIREWARD (Fire Response With Autonomous Reaction and Detection) is an innovative system built to combat wildfires using automation.
Crossfire | College Park, U.S.A. – The Crossfire solution is based on customizing available technologies and features multiple drones (large, long-endurance UAVs as well as small, multicopter UAVs), standard communication and navigation technologies, dual fire detection technologies (thermal and optical cameras), and enhanced water-based fire suppression (water containers featuring an innovative rupture and dispersion mechanism) all integrated into a system of systems using optimization methods, AI, and machine learning algorithms.
Data Blanket | Bellevue, U.S.A. – Data Blanket is a multidisciplinary group of experts with vast experience in aerospace, autonomous systems, AI, computer vision, comms, and military special operations. Their solution can autonomously detect and suppress incipient stage wildfires using proprietary AI swarm controllers.
Dryad | Eberswalde, Germany – Dryad's vision is to establish an extensive IoT network that enables both public and private forest owners to monitor, analyze, and protect the world's most vulnerable forests. Our initial solution, Silvanet, focuses on the ultra-early detection of forest fires able to spot smoldering fires within minutes. By significantly reducing response times, Dryad is playing a pivotal role in preventing forest fires.
Ember Flash Aerospace | Santa Cruz, U.S.A. – Ember Flash develops advanced unmanned air systems and integrates data analytics and decision-making tools to enhance situational awareness for disaster response.
Fire Foresight | Hobart, Australia – A global joint venture between data orchestrator Indicium Dynamics, machine vision provider RoboticsCats, satellite AI builder Little Place Labs, and custom drone builder Taz Drone Solutions. As the challenges related to fires evolve, Fire Foresight’s systems are designed to house more data sources and inputs. Big problems demand adaptable solutions. The Fire Foresight Platform, modular in design, ensures readiness for the next innovation.
FireFly | San Francisco, U.S.A. – Team Firefly is a collaboration between Xwing, Trident Sensing and Solaris Suborbital. Their persistent, autonomous wildfire detection and suppression system leverages existing technologies for reliable, affordable, and safe at scale operations. Their work includes suborbital surveillance platforms and a dual layer sensing strategy for robust, overlapping fire detection and precision suppressant delivery.
FireSwarm Solution | Squamish, Canada – A multidisciplinary team composed of experts in engineering, fire management, flight automation, regulations, and drone tech creating a fully autonomous aerial wildfire response system. FireSwarm delivers autonomous, heavy-lift drone swarms for rapid, precise wildfire suppression in an end-to-end solution positioned to not only succeed in the XPRIZE Wildfire challenge but also to revolutionize wildfire management by harnessing the power of machine learning, ultra heavy-lift (UHL) drones, autonomous flight technology, and logistics.
Georgia Tech FlameJackets| Atlanta, U.S.A. – The FlameJackets are based out of Georgia Tech (Atlanta) and consist of approximately 60 students and faculty. The FlameJackets are partnered with Cobra Aero of Hillsdale, Michigan. Their solution is a unique hybrid drone that can carry significant payloads and/or have extended range. Their first prototype is powered by a 33cc 2-stroke generator that weighs just a few pounds and is capable of keeping the drone in the air for nearly 24 hours or, in another configuration, carrying payloads exceeding 50 pounds.
GatorX | Gainesville, U.S.A. – GatorX is a well-rounded partnership between Fire Neural Network, University of Florida, NVIDIA, Satlantis, SwissDrones, Archer Aviation, SWIR Vision Systems, and N5 Sensors. The fully autonomous GatorX solution removes first responders from harm’s way and displays the use of advanced AI for good in real-world applications in accessible and responsible ways. Using Satlantis satellite imaging, Fire Neural Network High-Risk-Lightning sensors, N5 smoke sensors, FireBird drones, and UF's NVIDIA HiPerGator AI supercomputer, GatorX can quickly detect the location of hotspots, verify the hotspots, and autonomously eliminate fires.
Green Tech Innovation | Monterrey, Mexico – Green Tech Innovation (GTI) collaborates with Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (TEC) for UAV design and Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP) for simulations. Their solution combines advanced drone technology with AI-driven data analysis to identify and predict fire outbreaks. By utilizing real-time satellite data and deploying autonomous drones equipped with thermal cameras, GTI aims to provide immediate alerts and actionable insights to firefighting teams, along with the deployment of fire combat UAVs. Mentors include experts from SOPFEU, NASA, and AI labs.
Israel Aerospace Industries - Autonomous Systems | Tel Aviv, Israel – Israel Aerospace Industries was built in partnership with IAI, Singular Aircraft, Aerotor, INFRA, Technion, Creomagic, and Agora with each contributing expertise and experience. IAI relies on a fully autonomous solution based on advanced centralized autonomous C2 center, multiple highly efficient quadcopters for scanning and fire detection, large capacity firefighting UAV, SWIR sensor tailored for long distance wide coverage fire detection, and advanced AI algorithms to maximize prediction of detection and to minimize false positive detections.
MetaPhotonix | Orinda, U.S.A. – Metaphotonix builds programmable instruments of light. They are pursuing the radical idea that wildfires can be discovered and suppressed remotely, at the speed of light, with light alone. They will leverage quantum-enhanced light detection for a fire-modified light spectrum to discover wildfires and plan to use intense light beams to repeatedly detonate the atmosphere by ion-based avalanche breakdown and extinguish the fire with the resulting acoustic shockwaves.
N5SHIELD| Rockville, U.S.A. – Team N5SHIELD is led by N5 Sensors, Inc. N5SHIELD hopes to end the devastating impacts of wildfires while ensuring a positive impact on the environment by using ground based sensor networks, AI, and satellite image analysis to detect and locate fires in minutes, deploy autonomous suppression capabilities, and monitor for reignition.
Optect - Optical Detection | Bath, United Kingdom – Team Optect is a collaboration between Optect (UK), specialists in flame detection, and Sonic Fire Tech (US), leaders in infrasound based fire suppression. Optect’s solution relies on deploying airborne sensors during critical wildfire conditions to detect fires as small as 1-2 meters, ground-based sensors that maintain a base level of coverage, and the ability to deploy high-speed autonomous VTOL UAVs with sonic fire suppression tech that can extinguish fires with high-intensity infrasound waves.
Pyr-Stop | Bristol, United Kingdom – Pyr-Stop is a dynamic team of engineers united by a common goal–leveraging their skills to combat the growing threat of wildfires. Every unit is specifically designed and built with a view towards dedicated roles. The wider system is commanded and controlled by a central system, while allowing for autonomous agility for tactical mission objectives by utilizing the latest visual detection algorithms and decision matrix techniques.
Rain | Alameda, U.S.A. – Founded in 2019, Rain adapts military and civil autonomous aircraft with the intelligence to perceive, understand, and suppress wildfires. Rain adapts autonomous aircraft with a Wildfire Mission Autonomy System, enabling aircraft to autonomously perceive, understand and suppress ignitions.
RAINDROPS | Trondheim, Norway – A student-led collaboration between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway) and Brigham Young University (BYU, USA). RAINDROPS envisions a solution that combines two classes of UAS, namely those tasked with observation and fire detection and those tasked with fire suppression, for a system-of-systems approach to enable scalable wildfire response across geographical environments.
Rangair | Beaverton, U.S.A. – Rangair brings expertise in technology innovation, wireless networking, software development, regulatory compliance, and scientific research. Their solution integrates VTOL UAVs with high-res cameras, ML algorithms, and a proprietary wireless comms platform as well as a suppression payload that delivers targeted suppression under the tree canopy. Their modular design allows for cost-effective, scalable deployment while their proprietary Airborne Broadband network ensures real-time situational awareness.
SkySpec | Tokyo, Japan – SkySpec’s diverse team includes engineers, environmentalists, UI experts, research professors from combustion and thermofluid, and two XPRIZE alums. Skyspec brings a three-stage solution. First, drone reconnaissance precisely locates and validates the nature of the fire. Second, suppression with a dual solution of biodegradable foam shells containing dry powder extinguishant for rapid flame suppression and cellulose-based eco-friendly, water-soluble gel with water-like viscosity to form a protective barrier against flames. In the final mitigation stage, more drones sprinkle water to wash away the gel and help the forest recover.
Texas-Soton | Austin, U.S.A. – Team Texas-Soton is a collaboration between The University of Texas at Austin, University of Southampton, University of Edinburgh, TU Delft, and Texas A&M Forest Service. Their solution uses a heterogeneous set of uncrewed autonomous UAV systems equipped with various sensors with state-of-the-art motion planning and data processing algorithms to cover large areas, detect wildfires, and coordinate suppression. High performance suppression drones will then carry sufficient suppressants to suppress incipient fires. The overall solution will use a combination of edge computing, radio links, and user interfaces to achieve accurate and speedy detection and suppression.
Think Circuits | Oakland, U.S.A. – An intrepid team and R&D firm, Think Circuits is composed of PhD and M.S. graduates from Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford, with 60+ years of industry experience serving clients in robotics and consumer electronics. Think Circuit relies on detection drones to employ a proprietary fire detection package using radio-frequency and visual sensor fusion to provide rapid localization and discrimination of fires.
Wild-Flyer | Huntsville, U.S.A. – Wild-Flyer was formed by Modular Aerospace as both a mission and platform for special missions. The system includes a “Wild-Flyer Swarm” of multiple high-altitude vehicles with sensors and deployable low-speed glide vehicles. It operates from a central location (“Wild-Flyer Nest”) for ground maintenance, takeoff, and landing.
Wildfire Quest | San Jose, U.S.A. – WildfireQuest is a highschool team located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Led by industry professionals and boasting a diverse skill set, they offer an innovative approach to wildfire management. They use a symphony of convergent and dependent ground, aerial, and space-based technologies. Their multimodal detection system offers redundancy and greater accuracy when differentiating wildfires and decoys. To maximize drone area coverage, they employ a bullseye attack strategy ensuring all fires are detected. Their custom drones use advanced path planning combined with unique structural qualities to maintain battery life and ensure a successful mission.
Windracers Environmental | Southampton, United Kingdom – Windracers Environmental unites makers of the ULTRA UAV (Windracers) with experts in avionics (Distributed Avionics), swarming (Uni Bristol), AI-imaging (Uni Sheffield), and firefighting (Lancashire). Windracers Environmental has designed a swarm of ULTRAs (long-endurance high-payload UAVs) capable of continuous operation over large areas. The swarm of ULTRAs will autonomously deploy over the areas to search, detect fires using on-board AI-based image processing, and coordinate to deliver their extinguishing payload directly onto the fire. A human-centric interface allows for monitoring of the swarm, and, if needed, human intervention based on firefighting expertise in the team.