A Two-Step Fire Blanket Release Mechanism for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Using fire blankets is one effective option for fire extinguishing. This paper proposes a two-step release mechanism for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can precisely drop a blanket onto a target location using the advantage of wind load, avoiding the ground effect. We analyzed wind velocity under the UAV body to find the optimized range that maximizes the release of the fire blanket. Afterwards, we tested the performance of our proposed system in an indoor environment with simulated wind disturbance. Our experiment results showed that the system is robust against wind disturbance at 3.5 m/s. Finally, we tested our system with UAVs in an outdoor environment with different heights and proved the effectiveness of the system for up to 4 m height in an outdoor environment.