SEMFIRE

Europe has been affected by an alarming number of wildfires every year, ravaging nearly half a million hectares of forestry areas and resulting in an unacceptable amount of human losses. The year 2017 was one of the worst ever recorded, with devastating wildfires raging across the globe. Bearing these shocking facts in mind, this position paper aims to lay the foundations of crucial new upcoming research in the field of forestry robotics by presenting an overview of the SEMFIRE project. SEMFIRE proposes the development of a robotic system designed to reduce the accumulation of combustible material in forests, thus assisting in landscaping maintenance tasks for wildfire prevention. SEMFIRE (Safety, Exploration and Maintenance of Forests with the Integration of Ecological Robotics) proposes the development of a support system embracing robotics and other innovative technologies, so as to reduce fuel accumulation (e.g., forest debris), thus assisting in landscaping maintenance tasks. This is an application domain with an unquestionable beneficial impact at the economic, social and environmental level, as the proposed project will contribute by significantly reducing wildfire hazard potential. SEMFIRE addresses several relevant disciplines to succeed in fire prevention by benefiting from disruptive technologies and novel ecological robotic approaches. The focus will be placed in the development of a multi-robot system, combined with pervasive local positioning, multi-robot navigation and coordination in forests, and an innovative artificial perception architecture. SEMFIRE will be developed by a consortium with proven experience in robotics and other technological solutions. as well as experts in wildfire prevention. SEMFIRE follows the research topics covered by the Institute of Systems and Robotics of the University of Coimbra (ISR-UC), the robotic technologies developed by Ingeniarius, Lda. (ING), and in the application domain of SFera ultimate, Lda. (SFU). This 36-month project will be methodically evaluated by specialists under real-world settings (i.e., forest lands), in a technological perspective of commercial valuation.