Autonomous Fire Fighting Drone for Fire Detection and Suppression

Firefighting drones offer a revolutionary approach to suppressing fires, reducing human risk in hazardous environments. This paper introduces the design and implementation of an autonomous firefighting drone equipped with a servo-controlled release mechanism for deploying an extinguisher ball to detect and suppress fires. The system integrates a Pixhawk 2.4.8 flight controller for navigation, a Raspberry Pi 4 for real-time fire detection using computer vision, and a hexacopter frame powered by 920 KV motors. The drone autonomously navigates obstacles, locates the fire, hovers, and deploys an extinguisher ball. Experimental results demonstrate the system's ability to accurately detect and extinguish small-scale fires. The system successfully detects fire with 100 % precision at high confidence levels and maintains a recall of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\text{8 3. 0 \%}$</tex>, ensuring effective fire coverage. The <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\text{5 2. 9 \%}$</tex> mAP affirms the system's suitability for real-time fire detection in semi-controlled environments.