Student: Khaknazar Shyntassov

Project: Drone-Based Automatic Indoors Firefighting System

View: Research Poster (PDF)

Institution: Lafayette College

Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advisor: Yi-Choung Yu

Abstract

The ongoing rise of residential fire cases and associated property damage suggests the ineffectiveness of current firefighting solutions. This paper proposes an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based firefighting system that detects and locates the indoor fire ignition source and extinguishes it instantly using a small drone. A method is developed that consists of the following steps: 1) fire detection using video-based machine learning method, 2) fire localization using stereoscopic vision, and 3) automated navigation of the drone from its base station to the fire using pre-stored paths combined with the detected fire location. Two object detection algorithms are compared (Haar cascade and YOLOv3) and the most effective one is further assessed for the detection of indoor fires. Methods for extinguishing a fire from a drone are discussed. The efficiency of the proposed method is evaluated through experiments with a DJI Tello drone.

Khaknazar Shyntassov

About Khaknazar Shyntassov

Khaknazar Shyntassov is a sophomore electrical and computer engineering student at Lafayette College. His main research interests are smart systems, automation, and UAS applications. He is a Summer 2020 EXCEL Scholar, and recipient of Murray G. Clay’30 Award in Engineering Science, Scholarship in Memory of Tyler L. Myers’03, and Coffey Family Scholarship. He is currently working at Lafayette College’s Digital Scholarship Services center and assists with the digitization of the library archives and special collections. In 2020, he participated in the PennApps hackathon, where his team developed an intuitive donation platform that helps citizens quickly find hospitals in need of donations and won the “Best Use of Google Cloud: COVID-19 Hackathon Fund” nomination. In his free time, Khaknazar enjoys playing guitar and piano. He speaks Russian, Kazakh, and French.