Ex-NASA Engineer's Drone Fleet Finds, Diagnoses, and Fights Wildfires as a Team
alex_verem · x · 2026-09-11
Iwa Robotics, founded by ex-NASA JPL engineer Mirza Samnani, unveiled a three-drone fleet for wildfire response: HAWK for long patrols, CANARY for sensor-based fire diagnostics, and PELICAN for autonomous suppression at hot spots.
The design splits "find, understand, hit" across three purpose-built aircraft. Sold as a full-service subscription covering aircraft, training, data, maintenance, and insurance. Touring fire agencies across eight states.
Caveats: no published range, flight time, payload, smoke/wind performance, or FAA authorizations; line-of-sight rules constrain wide-area patrols. Rivals Rain (autonomous Black Hawk water drops) and Dryad (sub-12-minute autonomous detection and suppression) are already in the space.
Related event: Ex-NASA Engineer's Three-Drone Fleet Detects and Fights Wildfires(2 posts)→
More from Embodied
- Skyfall AI's SKY-001 world model turns sketches into CAD builds in 3.9s, vs 199s for GPT-6 Astra — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-10-27
- Tesla FSD approved in Latvia, the 10th European country; Musk praises smaller nations for moving fastest — elonmusk · 2026-10-27
- WanGP v18.81 adds Tencent's Hy-Nomas world model, playable on 8GB VRAM — cocktailpeanut · 2026-10-27
- NVIDIA open-sources FLORA, a robotics data engine ~125x cheaper than GPT-6 Astra — nvidia · 2026-10-27
- Embodied AI startups need a different operational discipline, investor says — ___Mufasaa · 2026-10-27
- π0.5 study: raising demos from 10 to 438 lifts Place Ball in Bowl success from 7% to 83% — stingning · 2026-10-27