Rain and Sikorsky Demonstrate Early Detection and Rapid Response to Wildfires With an Autonomous Black Hawk® Helicopter

ALAMEDA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rain, a leader in aer­i­al wild­fire con­tain­ment tech­nol­o­gy, and Siko­rsky, a Lock­heed Mar­tin com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in advanced rotor­craft, com­plet­ed flight tests in late 2023 demon­strat­ing how an autonomous heli­copter car­ry­ing water can be quick­ly launched to sup­press a wild­land fire in its very ear­ly stage.

Rain and Siko­rsky col­lab­o­rat­ed to per­form the inte­grat­ed flight demon­stra­tions at Siko­rsky head­quar­ters in Strat­ford, Con­necti­cut. The Option­al­ly Pilot­ed Black Hawk heli­copter flew in autonomous mode with Siko­rsky safe­ty pilots on board. Togeth­er, we have shown a series of first-of-their-kind capa­bil­i­ties that can enable accel­er­at­ed aer­i­al response to wildfires:

• Inte­grat­ing wild­fire ear­ly detec­tion cam­eras (pow­ered by Alchera X’s FireScout AI) with auto­mat­ed air­craft dis­patch and rout­ing pow­ered by Rain.
• An option­al­ly pilot­ed BLACK HAWK heli­copter with Sikorsky’s MATRIX™ flight auton­o­my sys­tem was inte­grat­ed with Rain’s wild­fire mis­sion auton­o­my system.
• Rain’s wild­fire mis­sion auton­o­my sys­tem processed imagery from an on-board high-res­o­lu­tion ther­mal cam­era to local­ize, tar­get and sup­press the fire, direct­ing both the aircraft’s flight path and water release timing.

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