Promoted content: Light Unmanned Aircraft represents technology at full flight

Data, and how we use it, is becoming ever more critical in our day-to-day operations – especially when it comes to forest firefighting and supporting emergency operations.

The Lua, which is developed by Babcock’s Innovation Team in Spain, consists of an unmanned helicopter-based aerial platform with a maximum take-off weight of 25kg. It has a payload capacity of 7 kg and more than 2.5 hours of autonomous endurance. It also has a 30km range from its ground station, can be deployed in less than 15 minutes, and is now used during night operations.

Lua is pioneering in several ways. It is capable of several hours of autonomous flight and, through the use of predictive modelling of changing meteorological conditions, Babcock can analyse the data programmed into the UAVs to help decide which incident locations to focus on and how best to optimise the number of manned helicopters available to target fires.

Lua also works in conjunction with Babcock’s EINFOREX Firefighting technology system by providing geo-referenced images in the visible and infrared spectrum and the visualisation of the set of images on a 3D scene.