The US Forest Service is putting Unmanned Aerial Vehicles -- called UAV's -- into service to monitor wildfires and map wilderness areas.
Aug 9, 2007 11:29
CHELSMFORD, Mass. -- The US Forest Service is putting unmanned aerial vehicles -- called "UAV's" -- into service watching wildfires and mapping wilderness areas.
The aerial robots will support two wildfire monitoring and forest mapping projects in 2007 with the VistaNav(TM)- SSR Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). USFS Remote Sensing Applications Center, located in Salt Lake City, Utah, provides technical assistance to agency field units using advanced geospatial technology for improved monitoring and mapping of natural resources. The UAV's are made by Mercury Computer Systems, Inc..
The UAV's are called VistaNav-SSR. SSR means Smart Surveillance and Reconnaissance. The system is a complete, high-performance system that includes a ground control station integrated with 3D Synthetic Vision and a small motorized unmanned aerial vehicle, i.e., a flying robot.
The system features miniaturized airborne and mission computing image processing capabilities designed to improve control and command functions, increase situational awareness, and integrate ground-imaging computations for aerial remote sensing applications such as oil and gas pipeline monitoring, border surveillance, forest fire detection and monitoring, precision agriculture, and more.
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"Wildfire operations can be very costly in terms of equipment and personnel, especially higher-risk night operations," said Sally Collins, Associate Forest Service Chief, Forest Service. "Together with Mercury, the Forest Service will employ VistaNav-SSR unmanned aircraft systems to help in providing precise imagery and actionable intelligence to Incident Command Teams leading to significantly safer tactics in fighting wildfires."
"We are very pleased to be selected by the Forest Service for these projects, and to demonstrate an affordable solution that provides valuable imagery to help the Incident Command Team leaders decide on the most effective assignments for direct fire-suppressant resources," said Philippe Roy, General Manager of the Avionics and Unmanned Systems Group at Mercury Computer Systems. "Flying above fire at night can be dangerous for manned aircraft, and low-level manned aircraft flights are not currently utilized for safety reasons. Unmanned aircraft systems can fly long missions, survey wildfire sites at low altitude, and transmit critical data to enable more informed decisions more quickly."
Mercury is demonstrating the VistaNav-SSR at AUVSI's Unmanned Systems North America 2007 conference, August 7-9, at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit Mercury in Booth #729, visit www.mc.com/ssr, or contact Mercury at (978) 967-1769.
For more information: www.mc.com.
