BurnBot RX burns unwanted vegetation without emitting plumes of smoke.
Lora Kolodny for CNBC
Last year’s record-breaking heat wave worsened drought and drought conditions across the world, a situation particularly calamitous for California, which saw 13 of the 20 most destructive wildfires in human history. the state since 2017.
In South San Francisco, a small startup is working on a high-tech approach to wildfire prevention.
Anukool Lakhina and Waleed “Lee” Haddad founded BurnBot in 2022 to develop robots and remote-controlled vehicles that can munch on and burn invasive plants or other dry vegetation that can fuel fires if left fallow.
BurnBot just raised $20 million in funding led by climate-focused ReGen Ventures to expand, hire and develop new machines that can traverse steeper hills and access more open spaces. restricted.
Before BurnBot, firefighters and landowners had to resort to expensive, time-consuming, and more dangerous options like grazing vegetation (usually with goats), burning it, applying herbicides, or removing vegetation mechanically with a mix of equipment and manual labor.
“The traditional way to do prescribed burning is with drip torches, and that requires a lot of people,” said Lakhina, CEO of BurnBot. “A drip torch is like a diesel watering can. You go around, you drop some diesel, then you light it.”
Burnbot’s current model, the RX, is a remote-controlled vehicle that looks like a cross between an oversized Zamboni and a steel stove with a set of fire extinguishers strapped to its back. Like other agricultural and construction equipment, the RX moves on tank-like tracks and wheels, which allow it to maneuver over rough fields.
Within the RX’s chambers are several rows of torches that emit blue flames and precisely adjust heat levels to eliminate unwanted vegetation or other fuel on the ground. The BurnBot RX’s chambers also trap and burn smoke from burning vegetation, so it does not pollute the air of surrounding communities. Once the torch is finished, the RX sprays water repeatedly to extinguish any remaining embers.
Inside the chambers BurnBot RX torches are lit to do the work of a prescribed burn.
Lora Kolodny for CNBC
Lakhina said BurnBot’s systems can be used where traditional controlled burns won’t work. For example, blowtorch burns produce a large amount of smoke, sufficiently conductive to interfere with the proper operation of power lines or high-voltage equipment. BurnBot machines can be used even under power lines.
The company aims to make every person working in fire prevention 10 times more efficient than they were with old methods, Lakhina said.
Haddad, BurnBot’s chief technology officer, noted that land is not always ready to “receive fire” during a prescribed burn. So the company programmed equipment, which it purchases from another supplier, to drive in front of the RX to grind down vegetation in an area of concern before it’s ready to be set on fire.
BurnBot plans to conduct a prescribed burn this Friday in San Diego, a project for CalTrans, the state transportation agency. He also plans another burn to Pacific Gas and Powerthe state’s main public service, in June.
PG&E spends more than $1 billion on “vegetation management” each year. Kevin Johnson, who runs the company’s Wildfire Resilience Partnerships, said PG&E is always “looking for opportunities to do this work safer, faster, cheaper and more environmentally responsible.”
BurnBot has already demonstrated its controlled combustion machine under PG&E transmission lines.
Brice Muenzer, CalFire battalion chief in Monterey, Calif., said massive fires in the state and across the United States over the past decade were partly caused and certainly exacerbated by overzealous suppression. small fires, including ritual fires of indigenous communities.
“We have removed fire from the ecosystem over the past 150 years and are living that reality today,” the chief said.
CalFire worked with BurnBot personnel, machines and additional drones to create what is called a field control line in at least one location. Muenzer says the group hopes to do more with the startup.
Creating a line of control, or marking off terrain, involves firefighters strategically burning areas when the weather is calm and flames can be controlled to create scars that will prevent other fires from spreading and reaching areas. containing lots of new material to burn.
BurnBot Co-Founders (LR) CTO Waleed “Lee” Haddad and CEO Anukool Lakhina
Lora Kolodny for CNBC
BurnBot ultimately aims to expand its operations beyond California, with offices and fleets of its machines where vegetation management is needed and wildfire risk is highest.
“There are 50 million acres that the U.S. Forest Service says need to be treated every year and that’s just forest land,” Lakhina said. In the United States, a total of 237 million acres require treatment. And grazing can cost $1,000 an acre. »
Children’s health is at stake, as are property and healthy forests, Lakhina added. Wildfire smoke can be more toxic than air pollution from other sources, leading to more emergency room visits, especially for children who are exposed, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.
Because BurnBot offers greater precision than grazing, herbicides and mechanical removal, its systems should also prove more ecologically beneficial, Haddad said. The BurnBot RX is able to help prevent the spread of seeds of invasive species, for example, without causing any of those species to develop resistance to an herbicide.
ReGen was joined in BurnBot’s funding round by investors including AmFam Ventures, which is the venture capital arm of an insurance company, Toyota Ventures, and previous backers including robotics fund Pathbreaker , Convective Capital and Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital.
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