When certain tasks involve risks to personnel, unmanned systems are increasingly being deployed. This applies in an industrial context as well as in the fields of emergency services and disaster relief. But sometimes even drones reach their limits. Pushing these boundaries is the aim of the Swiss start-up FireDrone. The multicopter developed by the company is capable of withstanding ambient temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius.
The impetus for the development of the FireDrone came from the images of the Grenfell Tower disaster in London. In 2017, the 24-storey residential tower block in the North Kensington district was gutted by fire, claiming the lives of 72 people. It will never be possible to determine whether better information from inside the burning building could have saved lives and prevented risks to emergency services. However, the hope is that in future, unmanned systems could help to respond more effectively to similar disaster situations than is currently the case.
Ultra-light and heat-resistant
The FireDrone is a compact quadcopter encased in a novel polyimide aerogel shell. Polyimides are high-performance plastics that are not only resistant to extremely high temperatures but also characterised by dimensional stability, mechanical strength and exceptional electrical insulation properties. This ultra-light material, originally developed for insulating space suits and spacecraft, protects the drone’s internal components from extreme thermal stress. In combination with an integrated cooling system, the drone can operate for several minutes at ambient temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius and deliver high-resolution (thermal) imagery.
What began as an ambitious academic project at Empa has now developed into a promising spin-off. Empa is the interdisciplinary research institute of the Department of Materials Science and Technology at the renowned Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. The idea behind the FireDrone goes beyond mere firefighting, as it also has enormous potential for use in industrial applications. Where equipment such as smelting furnaces, chemical reactors or tanks needs to be inspected, the necessary cooling-down phases have so far resulted in high downtime costs. With the FireDrone, inspections can in future be carried out whilst the equipment is still ‘hot’, which boosts the efficiency of the systems and enhances staff safety.
This article was produced in collaboration with Drones, the specialist magazine offering Insights for the Uncrewed Future: www.drones-magazine.com
