Heavy-duty drones take flight to combat wildfires
LA SELVA BEACH — Nestled amidst cypress trees and a blanket of thick coastal fog lies an inconspicuous workshop where Parallel Flight drones are being tinkered with and tested. The “Firefly” — weighing 120 pounds — looks only faintly like its hobbyist cousins and more resembles a small aircraft.
“What we don’t have are essentially pickup trucks of the sky,” Resnick said. “We don’t have workhorses that can bring supplies to firefighters on the front lines or drop off payloads to do controlled burns, and we don’t have drones that can put small fires out. The company also plans to use its drones for industrial and shipping operations. Resnick spoke of the drones aiding in construction of wind turbines, carrying heavy magnets to map aquifers, dropping off packages to remote Arctic villages and supplying rural areas with crucial medical equipment.The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency, has supplied the company with $750,000 in grants.
But Resnick, who co-founded the company with David Adams and Bobby Hulter, discovered no one was flying drones to aid wildland firefighters with supply drops. Parallel Flight sits on a campus shared with private school Monterey Bay Academy, where acres of empty fields stretch out to meet the coast. It’s perfect flying grounds for drones.
Inside the Firefly, hundreds of sensors alert the drone’s computer to what’s happening in the airspace it is flying through. The computer then takes that information — air pressure, temperature, acceleration data — and adjusts accordingly.
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