During the Palisades fire, all sorts of aerial assets were put into play to try and mitigate the devastating damage and eventually contain the fire. While one might assume that light helicopters—such as those manufactured in nearby Torrance, California, by Robinson Helicopter—wouldn’t be suited for firefighting, that isn’t the case. 

“Obviously, our aircraft are lower weight than what would be productive and practical for water dropping at this scale,” said Robinson CEO David Smith, although the turbine R66 does have the performance capability to carry water drop systems like the Bambi Bucket. “At the size and scale of these fires, they need big fixed-wing aircraft, and they need the larger helicopters when they want to get in close.”

Robinson did support the firefighters in other ways, Smith explained. “We flew some fire commanders in aerial support, and we flew a few crews of folks flying over the fires at the Palisades.” These included Santa Monica Fire Department chief Matthew Hallock and deputy chief Tom Clemo; chief Mariana Ruiz-Temple from the Oregon State Fire Marshall (OSFM); deputy chief Steve Bregman, special operations, city of Portland, Oregon; and OSFM agency representatives chief Ian Yocum and chief Lance Lighty.

There are other ways Robinson can serve firefighters, Smith explained, including adding Ascent Aerosystems, its recently acquired drone company, to the mix. “Our main goal is helping to move VIPs,” he said, “and give them aerial command and control and then provide another way to do fire mapping, both with our rotary wing assets, which they’re using right now, and drone assets that we have developed.”

In partnership with Data Blanket, an artificial intelligence hardware and software company, Robinson is working on putting all these assets together to help prevent and fight fires. “They’re doing incredible things that will allow our aircraft to team with the drones to provide mass surveillance for prevention of fire, identification of when fire occurs, and to quickly put it out before it scales,” Smith said.

“Probably the biggest thing our law enforcement customers today tell us is that search and rescue and finding missing persons is a significant part of their role. And these swarm AI-enabled drones built into our aircraft will enable much quicker finding of the missing person.”

From a big-picture point of view, he explained, the mission is less that of flying an aircraft equipped with AI products than the aircraft becoming part of an aerial surveillance ecosystem. “We’ve been collaborating with [Data Blanket] for the most of a year,” he said. “You’re not flying the aircraft or the drone itself. You’re flying the mission. The drones manage the detail flying of the airspace. It’s an incredible capability that coordinates between the tactical flight officer and the aircraft. So it’s a low workload way to give them a substantial increase in sources of information.”