When the structure of the Parisian cathedral burned, the Parisian fire brigade sent a tracked robot inside the burning nave, dragging a 70-liter hose and delivering between 1500 and 2000 liters of water per minute, which is too insufficient to extinguish the enormous burning structure.
Parisian cathedral fire extinguishing task
With current technologies, attacking the fire from elevating platforms would have been more appropriate
Onlookers to the arduous fire extinguishing task taken up by the Parisian fire brigade saw a few small nozzles supplied by 45 mm pipes and delivering no more than 500 liters of water per minute. The fire hoses were positioned outdoors with a limited range and effect.
With current technologies, attacking the fire from elevating platforms would have been more appropriate, however, in order to limit risking the lives of operators, recent technologies offer a new and much safer possibility, such as the use of drones. A tactical drone can support the supply pipe and navigate at 30 degrees above the fire with at a distance of thirty meters from the flames.
Use of drones
In the drone, the UAV lance monitor holder should be located at an altitude of 70 meters, so that the pressure loss would be at about 8 bars. The 70 mm diameter water-filled hose would require the drone to carry about 80 meters, in other words 3 to 5 kilograms.
The monitor weighs around 15 kilograms and batteries for 3 hours of autonomy, weigh more than 100 kilograms, all within the framework of the taxi drone projects, currently under study.
Taxi drone project
This taxi drone project will be undertaken by POK S.A.S with its own funds as soon as the ongoing studies offer it the opportunity to do so. It should be remembered that in 42 years, the company has developed 4200 firefighting, safety and detection products, which basically comes to about a hundred per year and therefore, two per week, astonishing numbers by any standards.
POK started from nothing 42 years ago and started by losing its capital for an innovation then this capital was rebuilt through hard work. Now, public firefighters prefer to buy foreign equipment because journalists promote it.
Higher sales abroad of drones
In other countries, firefighters are keen on innovation and make the effort to get information
New French equipment is unknown to them for several reasons. First of all, because French companies do not have the means to make themselves known on this market and second of all, the French market is too small to make such an operation profitable.
However, in other countries, firefighters are keen on innovation and make the effort to get information, which explains why POK sales are mainly made abroad. So it will take between five and ten years for the information to return to France. So the important question here is, How to proceed to innovate?
Importance of the ‘development’ stage in new products
The principle is to try associations between various phenomena. Once the novelty has proven to have ensured the potential market, the product will be adopted by successive improvements. This is the longest and most expensive part of the research. This ‘development’ has become essential to produce a product that is accepted by modern customers.
In current times, with adjustable flow and pressure, a modern UAV lance monitor has a range 30% greater than forty years ago. POK S.A.S believes that with the constant evolution and wider deployment of drones and advanced technologies in firefighting and fire detection operations in the future, the world will experience a new step forward. The opportunities offered by electronics are immense and ever growing.