LOS ANGELES -- A giant, remote-controlled vehicle -- somewhere between a tractor trailer, a tank and a Zamboni in appearance -- slowly rolled across the dry, brittle grass growing between a tangle of freeways in Thousand Oaks.
Inside it, fire churned. As it rolled over the land, that fire incinerated any brush it encountered, leaving only a thin smoke cloud billowing from the top of the machine, some flashes of orange and red from behind its metal skirt and, in its wake, a desolate, smoldering black line.
BurnBot isn't the fastest way to rid a landscape of dangerously flammable vegetation -- its top speed is about 0.5 mph -- but it can do something that traditional vegetation management techniques cannot: with almost surgical precision, it can kill the flammable brush sitting within feet of homes and highways on even the hottest and driest days with virtually no safety risks or disruptions to daily life.
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On a recent summer afternoon, as wildland firefighters maneuvered the machine and mopped up the charred earth on a stretch of highway about 30 miles west of Los Angeles, a who's who of SoCal's wildfire leadership looked on -- from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, local fire departments, Caltrans, the U.S. forest and park services, Southern California Edison and state Legislature. The sweet smoky smell of wildland fire permeated the hot midday air. The onlookers quietly took notes.
As humans ignite fires with increasing frequency in Southern California -- and continue to build deeper into fire-prone areas -- wildfire policymakers and scientists race to better understand how to manage the crisis.
Private investors throw millions of dollars at the problem and a slew of entrepreneurs and former firefighters try to develop high-tech solutions.
Fire researchers in Southern California haven't collected enough data to settle on which broad strategies are most effective, let alone which companies are best to carry them out.
Nevertheless, BurnBot caught the eyes of the departments and organizations spearheading wildfire mitigation in California.
BurnBot is the brainchild of computer scientist Anukool Lakhina and physicist Waleed Haddad.
After the 2020 Northern California fires, the two put their heads together to develop a technology solution for the state's crisis. They settled on essentially a "Roomba for the forest," as one onlooker at the August demonstration put it.
Haddad built a prototype of BurnBot in the kitchen of Lakhina's San Francisco home to convince fire scientists and investors that the idea might actually work. Its first meal: Lakhina's backyard.
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Today, the company built five full-size BurnBots -- called the RX, shorthand for the "prescribed" in "prescribed burn."
Lakhina thinks it can help Southern California address its two unique wildfire risk-reduction goals: lower the number of ignitions and create strategic fuel breaks to slow fire and give firefighters access to the region's fire-prone wildlands.
BurnBot aims to thwart human-started fires by removing flammable grasses along common ignition points, like roadways and power lines. Vehicles and electrical equipment historically caused about 2% of fires in the region. Arson, unsupervised kids and agriculture, construction and landscaping equipment were responsible for the lion's share; however, even those are much more common along roadways and near developments, where BurnBot hopes to operate.
Currently, agencies such as Caltrans often rely on routine mowing to fight the flammable grasses along transportation corridors and in populated areas. However, the seeds stay hidden underground and the grasses grow back quickly.
Herbicides, another common technique for managing invasive grasses, are often expensive to purchase and can leave toxic chemicals in the environment after treatment.
Meanwhile, prescribed burns can cover a lot of ground and can destroy invasive seeds. However, traditional prescribed burns can require road closures for safety reasons, and fire crews typically only perform them in cooler, wetter conditions to limit the risk of a powerful, runaway fire.
BurnBot RX can safely run any day, Lakhina said. Its Aug. 27 demo was conducted during peak fire season in 90 degree Fahrenheit weather. The only traffic control was a few cones placed along the highway's shoulder -- no road closures, no blocked lanes creating congestion.
While the research evaluating BurnBot's success is limited right now, Lakhina said his company is working with Stanford researchers to evaluate how land recovers after a visit from BurnBot. So far, they've seen anecdotal evidence that after a burn, fire-resilient native species often return instead of invasive grasses.
The company plans to have its experienced technicians and wildland firefighters use its five BurnBot RXs to complete wildfire risk reduction work across the state. It also plans to aggressively grow the size of its operation.
"Unlike other kinds of disasters, we have a lot of agency here: ... Take out the fuels, reduce the risk," Lakhina said. "California has wildfires, but California also has innovators. Shame on us if we can't sort our way out of this."
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