Data Blanket focuses on drone-based, AI-driven firefighter asset

A group of Washington state startup executives is pooling the experience and knowledge of overlapping backgrounds to turn their Data Blanket creation into an effective and powerful tool for the firefighters increasingly called out to battle raging blazes blackening multiplying areas of the planet.

Bellevue-based Data Blanket is developing a system of coaxial drones and artificial intelligence-enhanced computing to provide firefighters with faster, better information needed to extinguish the kinds of infernos that have burned out of control for weeks in Canada and Greece this year. Backed by financiers that include Bill Gates, the company’s aim is to perfect a platform using swarms of automated UAVs to both spot and analyze fires that have broken out, and also broadcast data from surrounding areas to determine the best strategies for suppressing them.

Blanket Data uses coaxial drones made by Ascent Aerosystems to get to and above blazes both small and large, and feed data beamed via 5G and Wi-Fi networks to artificial intelligence applications that quickly analyze the best method for response. Takeoff to, operation above, and return from burn sites are all automated, with current observer requirements per each swarm of four craft to eventually be obviated by beyond visual line of sight authorization that is already being sought.

Initially reported by GeekWire, the Data Blanket system goes beyond detection and analysis of blazes by also taking a complete survey of surrounding vegetation, topography, and other factors likely to favor and reveal where they will spread. 

That information is intended to permit firefighters to make the best possible decisions in defining backfire ignition and other containment methods. Rather than extinction using water or retardants, self-consumption has been found to be the single most decisive factor in halting conflagrations.

Read: Volatus drones help Alberta battle Canada’s enormous wildfires

Once operational, Blanket Data drones will function on their own, beaming back data that artificial intelligence computation will then deliver to firefighters. That will rapidly provide full profiles of where flames are, how intense various spots are burning, how outlying areas influence where they’ll head, and the most effective methods of getting them to burn themselves out.

The startup is the creation of two founders with experience in both the Israeli Army and the aviation sector, and a third who worked for Amazon Prime Air and was a founding member of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Drone Advisory Committee. 

Those complimenting backgrounds – and financial support from Bill Gates and an Eric Schmidt-backed investment scheme – are now merging to build a drone-based system allowing firefighters to more safely and effectively battle the often catastrophic blazes the world is suffering with greater frequently.

Read: London FireDrone project seeks to lower risks to firefighters

For now, those objectives of protecting the planet and responders’ lives are all Blanket Data is focused on, leaving the more common and potentially lucrative sector activities like aerial delivery to other startups.

“The crisis in wildfires and forest management is so intense that it’s around the clock,” Data Blanket CEO Omer Bar-Yohay told GeekWire of the company’s obsessive public service goal. “We get requests and comments and people needing more literally every day. I really hope we can deliver in a way that makes a difference.”