Robotics Cats Aims to Detect Forest Fires in Korea
The land area of South Korea is about 10.0M hectares (38,610 square miles) and is home to more than 18,000 species of animals and over 51 million people.
According to GlobalForestWatch and FOA, a little less than half of South Korea’s land consists of natural forest cover which makes it extremely susceptible to wildfires. Unlike California, the peak fire season in South Korea typically begins in springtime when the forest is most dry and can last for up to 12 weeks.
Wildfire smoke emitted by blazes at Uljin and Samcheok on March 5th, 2022. Source: NASA
On March 4th, 2022, two blazes began in Uljin county (North Gyeongsang Province) and the city of Samcheok (Guangwon Province). The fires burned continuously for 213 hours and torched 20,923 hectares (51,710 acres) of forests.
The Uljin and Samcheok fires are the largest wildfires Korea has experienced since its 2000 east coast fire.
Several homes and buildings have been burnt down as a result of the wildfire which has led to an increased need for new solutions to mitigate wildfire risks in South Korea. NDK, a Korean company that manufactures precision machinery for industry applications, recently established a partnership with RoboticsCats to provide early wildfire detection solutions in the country.
Robotics Cats and NDK Collaborate
The RoboticsCats wildfire detection demonstration system is installed on the rooftop of NDK office building. Source: Robotics Cats
NDK and RoboticsCats started discussions regarding a partnership in mid-2020. NKD has headquarters located in Gumi City, an industrial center of South Korea. Gumi City is the second-largest city in the North Gyeongsang Province, one of the provinces most recently impacted by wildfires. Recently, NDK set up a demonstration site in their office building to showcase Robotics Cats InsightFD 3 wildfire detection system and the LookOut wildfire detection SaaS.
The demo site will help potential customers visualize how camera systems and AI wildfire detection identify early-stage wildfire ignitions. Robotics Cats is pleased to work with NDK and is eager to collaborate with Santa Cruz County residents and businesses to bring the technology to Santa Cruz with the goal of mitigating and preventing wildfires such as the CZU fire that destroyed almost 1,500 structures including buildings and family homes.
Bring Wildfire Tech to Your Backyard or Business
A worker rises far above the treetops on a crane to perform maintenance on Verizon’s cell phone tower at Delaveaga Park. (Source: Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Robotics Cats recently applied for the CalTech Rocket Fund and were selected as semi-finalists. Robotics Cats is currently seeking potential sites to install a wildfire detection demo system (i.e. PTZ video surveillance camera, microwave wireless or 4G router, and solar power panels). Ideal sites include cell towers near indigenous communities that face high wildfire risk or existing cell towers like the one in Delevaega Park. If you have any information on how to connect with Verizon or other cell towers regarding the placement of a wildfire detection system, please reach out to us or contact Robotics Cats at info@roboticscats.com.
About Robotics Cats
Robotics Cats Limited is a technology company headquartered in Hong Kong. We are a team of talented people with diverse cultures. We focus on computer vision, AI and robotics technologies. We provide early wildfire detection and environmental monitoring products. We love people, trees and the world connecting them. The green, the blue and the things between them are full of love, power and divinity. These drive the team to work passionately to serve our customers around the globe. Our products protect the forests and their communities from being damaged by wildfires. We employ computer vision, AI and robotics technologies to build our products. Our products empower our customers to detect wildfires as soon as possible after they are ignited, our customers can then suppress the fires when they are small and hence can control the wildfires more effectively. Insight Robotics InsightFD is the global market leader in early wildfire detection. Its visual and thermal sensors will scan for fire and smoke. Our AI detection algorithms can detect wildfire at 15km distance. National parks, forestry, wildfire services, UNESCO world heritages, private companies around the world are using InsightFD to mitigate wildfire risks and damages.