button, and their Fotokite system opens up, deploys itself, and flies up to 45 meters in height to provide the first responders with mission-critical information about their scene. From up there, we provide both thermal and regular video down to the ground to give teams visibility and elevated intelligence over their scene.

The information delivered helps them size up and assess their incidents quickly and without drawing additional team resources like normal drones. We actively use a tether to provide power up the line and data down the line to deliver a fully autonomous, situational awareness system with 24-hour-plus flight times. The real benefit to the user is the fact that they gain this information without ever piloting the system- it’s as simple as it gets. They simply push “launch” on a tablet, set their altitude and camera angle, and the system takes care of the rest.

Once up in the air, the system is also set up to live stream that aerial information to other teams on the same site, or back at the fire station to provide more eyes on the scene than were possible before. They use this information to gain perspective and context of their incident, and then deploy their resources in a more data-informed way.