Gironde: a firefighting drone project wins an award at the Lépine competition

The project to combat the rekindling of fires has been awarded the Senate Grand Prize at the Lépine Competition, according to our colleagues at South-West. Cédric Cautard from Gironde, Jacques Pitoux and Pierrick Duret from Landes, and Patrick Dulong from Gers won the Senate Grand Prix at the Lépine competition on 8 May. Their project, “Firefighter drone: fire flare-up tracker”, impressed the jury. In practical terms, this new emergency response drone is specialised in firefighting. It is described as “a faster and more effective way of detecting sources of heat or smoke so that crews can intervene at the correct location and extinguish the source before the fire reignites”. It is equipped with fire-extinguishing equipment and two cameras: a video camera for monitoring and piloting the drone, and a thermal imaging camera for locating areas at potential risk of the fire reigniting. This means that the GPS coordinates of these sensitive areas can be transmitted to ground crews, enabling them to intervene if there is an imminent risk of the fire reigniting. This drone project is led by Air Marine. The company, based in Léognan (33), is one of the market leaders in aerial network surveillance using aircraft and civilian drones. It is expected to take charge of marketing this invention, which has been tested in collaboration with the Bouches-du-Rhône Departmental Fire and Rescue Service.