Bay Area high school students develop AI wildfire suppression system for global competition
As we gear up for the start of wildfire season, a South Bay high school team has developed an AI-powered system that can detect and suppress wildfires within minutes.
The Valley Christian High School team called Wildfire Quest in San Jose is a finalist in the $11 million global XPRIZE Foundation Wildfire competition, competing against the top AI and defense innovators.
"I'm wiring together here the stepper motor here to our stepper motor driver," said Joshua Guo, Valley Christian Wildfire Quest Student.
Guo knows all too well how devastating wildfires can be. He and his family were forced to evacuate when a fast-moving wildfire broke out dangerously close to his home.
"We were collecting like, suitcases, memories like all the photo albums, everything we could salvage, and it was like, in that moment I was just thinking, 'Is there really nothing I can do about this?' said Guo.
Guo is part of the Valley Christian High School's Wildfire Quest team which just became a finalist in the $11 million XPRIZE Foundation Wildfire Competition. He is using his electrical engineering and software skills to come up with a solution that's never been done before, autonomously detecting and suppressing a potentially catastrophic wildfire within 10 minutes.
"We have school and then we get to work on our system for XPRIZE Wildfire and every day I come to school like, well in just a few hours I'm going to be able to engineer something to help out the world," said Guo.
Their unique solution is mounting fire-retardant balls on top of drones and then dropping them directly over the wildfire. They're using their own AI technology as well as partnering with the drone company Kaizen Aerospace and the AI-based fire detection company Sensory AI.
Olivia Ahn is also on the Wildfire Quest team. She explained how their wildfire solution works.
"Essentially, there's fuse around the ball and inside there's a chemical fire suppressant powder that when the fuse is set off when it lands on a fire, it basically explodes and chokes out the fire," said Ahn. "The drone would fly out to a fire, detect the fire, and then drop these over the fire, and the fuse would set off, and then 'Bam, our fire would be suppressed!'"
Paul Doherty is with PG&E, a co-sponsor of the XPRIZE Wildfire competition.
"We couldn't be more excited to see a team like them, competing against some of the large defense contractors and other big corporations and organizations that are also working in this space to end catastrophic wildfire," said Doherty.
Danny Kim is leading the Wildfire Quest team. He's proud and inspired to work with these bright young minds.
"I will say the secret weapon we have with using high school kids is yes, they're inexperienced, but that inexperience translates both to energy, enthusiasm and creativity," said Kim. "The kids are kind of set loose to think of any idea and try and solve this thing that no one else has solved, and they come up with ideas that we never thought about."
"I feel like we've experienced it, like I mean back in 2020 there was like a huge wildfire that turned our skies orange, and it was like very scary and it was honestly like, I felt like there's nothing that I could do personally but now as high school students and teenagers, we have the opportunity to actually create this physical change," said Arissa Cao, Valley Christian Wildfire Quest Student.
For these Wildfire Quest students, it's not just a competition, it's a calling.
"Especially since we are still teenagers, exploring like, what means most to us, I think this is where I really found it," said Guo.
PG&E is the co-title sponsor and is supporting the next phase of the competition.
In the summer, the final round of testing will take place in Alaska where finalists must autonomously detect and fully suppress a wildfire across an area as large as the entire Bay Area within 10 minutes.
The winner of the XPRIZE Foundation Wildfire competition will be announced in September.
