Using robots to detect forest fires

Rex Sham and his WALL-E-inspired robots are improving fire detection to slash carbon emissions and make the world better. If he were in a movie, Rex Sham would be the bad guy, or at the very least the well-meaning scientist who unwittingly wipes out the human race. In reality, Sham, the co-founder and chief science officer of Insight Robotics, is using his ingenious, WALL-E-like fire-detecting robots to save the planet. What Sham has developed is an automated early warning system that combines a high-precision, pan-tilt robot with thermal imaging sensors and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) vision technology. In its tests of the Computer Vision Wildfire Detection System, the Guangdong Academy of Forestry (Insight Robotics' research partner since 2010) has recorded a 100 per cent detection rate in multiple field trials and deployments.