Autonomous wildfire hotspot detection using a fixed wing UAV

This paper is concerned with wildfire hotspot detection. An autonomous unmanned aerial system (UAS) for wildfire hotspot detection missions is presented and implemented on a fixed wing low altitude short endurance (LASE) UAV. The custom built system includes the features such as hotspot detection, real-time localisation and alert of the ground control station. The on-board computer processes fire information collected by the UAV and integrates with flight data to provide a comprehensive and reliable fire detection algorithm. The proof-of-concept system has been successfully tested through flight experiments.