Abstract
This paper provides insights into a human factors-oriented Concept of Operations (ConOps), which can be applied for future semi-autonomous drone swarms to support the management of wildfires. The results provide, firstly, an overview of the current practices to manage wildfires in Finland. Secondly, some of the current challenges and future visions about drone usage in a wildfire situation are presented. Third, a description of the key elements of the developed future ConOps for operating a drone swarm to support the combat of wildfires is given. The ConOps has been formulated based on qualitative research, which included a literature review, seven subject matter expert interviews and a workshop with 40 professionals in the domain. Many elements of this ConOps may also be applied to a variety of other swarm robotics operations than only wildfire management. Finally, as the development of the ConOps is still in its first stage, several further avenues for research and development are proposed.
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Acknowledgements
This research is funded by the Academy of Finland (project grant numbers 348010, 346710, and 348008) and conducted as part of the Unmanned aerial systems based solutions for real-time management of wildfires (FireMan) project. In addition, part of the financial support was from the project ’Finnish UAV Ecosystem’ (FUAVE, project grant numbers 337878, 337018, and 338080).
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Karvonen, H., Honkavaara, E., Röning, J., Kramar, V., Sassi, J. (2023). Using a Semi-autonomous Drone Swarm to Support Wildfire Management – A Concept of Operations Development Study. In: Harris, D., Li, WC. (eds) Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14018. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35389-5_17
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