Insider Brief
- Iwa Robotics introduced three autonomous drone platforms designed to help fire departments detect, assess and suppress wildfires in urban and wildland-interface areas.
- The company said Hawk handles long-endurance reconnaissance, Canary provides sensing and fire diagnostics, and Pelican performs aerial suppression for hot spots and fire lines.
- The three drones operate as Iwa’s Discovery and Resolution Fleet and will be offered through a fleet-as-a-service model that includes aircraft, autonomy training, data services, maintenance and insurance.
Iwa Robotics has introduced three autonomous drone platforms designed to help fire departments detect, assess and suppress wildfires in urban and wildland-interface areas.
According to the Los Angeles-based company, its Hawk aircraft is designed for long-endurance reconnaissance, while Canary provides sensing and fire diagnostics intended to help crews assess conditions and track changing threats. Pelican is designed for aerial suppression, including addressing hot spots and establishing fire lines through repeated water application.
“At its core, Iwa’s platform is centered on enhancing crew safety with in-field tools to diagnose the threat and engage accordingly — this includes critical sensory data and personnel risk signals,” CEO Mirza Samnani said. “We are particularly excited about the crew safety tools our Canary platform brings to a unit — it’s like your dalmatian in the sky.”
The three aircraft operate together under Iwa’s Discovery and Resolution Fleet system, which the company said allows fire crews to manage them as a coordinated autonomous fleet in the field.
“From the start, our approach has been to work side by side with fire crews, learning directly from the people who know this best: field teams, drone pilots, and fire captains who understand both firefighting and drone controls inside and out,” Samnani added. “They told us what they needed. We engineered it.”
Iwa plans to offer the drones through a fleet-as-a-service model that includes the aircraft, autonomy training, data services, maintenance and insurance. The company noted the model is intended to let agencies add aerial detection and remote suppression capabilities without purchasing the equipment upfront.
The company is beginning its second cross-country roadshow, with field demonstrations planned for fire and public-safety agencies across eight states.
