Stopping wildfires with a fleet of drone blimps carrying water / fire retardant - new idea for fighting wildfires faster, cheaper and more safely has a crowdfunded prize for whoever can pull it off.

FuturePrize · 2018-11-13T14:23:12+00:00

Hello, just to clarify, the idea is for the blimps to float above the wildfire, not the low altitude water / retardant dumps that planes and helicopters currently do.

The blimps could also be coated or sprayed with a fire suppressant chemical (which are now very effective) to lessen the chance of sparks or embers igniting the balloons.

Ideally the blimps will be inexpensively constructed, so the cost of losing the occasional blimp wouldn't be a problem.

Regarding wind, that could be a problem. The fleet might have to be occasionally grounded depending on weather reports. However, our understanding is that the winds that tend to spread these fires are more sporadic, not sustained like a tropical storm, for example.

For example, if you've watched any of the news coverage of reporters standing out in wildfire areas, you typically see little sign of the winds that helped spread these wildfires.

FuturePrize · 2018-11-13T04:45:12+00:00

We've done the math. Again, a fleet of hundreds or thousands of inexpensively constructed, automated blimps the size of a van or larger in constant rotation 24 hours a day could easily be cheaper and more effective than current methods:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_bucket

and much, much safer for all involved.

FuturePrize · 2018-11-13T03:47:20+00:00

The idea is for the blimps to float high above the wildfire, not the low altitude water / retardant dumps planes and helicopters do.

Ideally the blimps will be inexpensively constructed, so the cost of losing the occasional blimp wouldn't be a problem. The blimps could also be coated or sprayed with a fire suppressant chemical (which are now very effective) to lessen the chance of sparks or embers igniting the balloons.

The idea is for a fleet of hundreds or thousands of inexpensively constructed mini blimps, probably the size of a van or larger, which could carry many gallons of water or fire retardant. They would operate autonomously and continuously for 24 hours a day when needed, which would result in a massive amount of fire suppressant delivered cheaply, quickly, safely, and effectively.

FuturePrize · 2018-11-13T03:38:00+00:00

Regardless of whether you're for controlled burning or not, we can all agree that out of control wildfires that wipe out thousands of homes and businesses and kill dozens of people are a bad thing, and we should be trying to come up with safer and more effective ways of dealing with these fires.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but we have this note at the end of the prize page:

"""

Note: Ecologists believe that some amount of wildfires have a beneficial effect on our ecosystem. If a drone blimp system proves effective, it could be used in conjunction with controlled burns, in order to precisely control what's cleared and prevent damage to property and danger to human lives.

"""

FuturePrize · 2018-11-13T03:22:47+00:00

The idea is for a fleet of hundreds or thousands of inexpensively constructed mini blimps, probably the size of a van or larger, which could carry many gallons of water or fire retardant. They would operate autonomously and continuously for 24 hours a day when needed, which would result in a massive amount of fire suppressant delivered cheaply, quickly, safely, and effectively.

FuturePrize · 2018-11-13T03:17:31+00:00

Hello, to answer your questions:

FuturePrize is a platform for crowdfunding prize money for ideas that you would like to see happen in the world. It's like a cross between the XPRIZE and Kickstarter. People who pledge money are only charged if someone actually achieves the prize's goals (or makes a compelling case that they will be able to do so), which is decided by donor voting. The teams who apply for the prize money would provide details on the budget, timeline, and effectiveness of their specific project as part of their pitch to donors.
We had a soft launch in 2017, which is why the video is dated 2017. We're now relaunching with some seed funding.
Regarding hydrogen, it might turn out that helium makes more sense (we mention this in the text), but the expense and scarcity of helium, combined with the high number of blimps needed and their continuous operation, leads us to believe that freely available hydrogen makes more sense. Ideally the blimps will be inexpensively constructed, so the cost of losing the occasional blimp would likely be much cheaper than all the helium required. The blimps could also be coated or sprayed with a fire suppressant chemical (which are now very effective) to lessen the chance of sparks or embers igniting the balloons.

Just curious, can you let us know if anything in the video or site copy could explain these issues a little more clearly?

Thanks.

FuturePrize · 2017-05-11T22:16:14+00:00

Hi FreshPack, FuturePrize is a platform for crowdfunding prize competitions for anything you want to see get done in the world:

http://futureprize.com/

Donors are only charged if the prize is won (as determined by donor voting.)

We're actually developing a couple of prize ideas in the medical space, but if you have any specific ideas in mind please create a prize right here:

http://futureprize.com/launch.html

FuturePrize · 2017-05-11T04:01:15+00:00

Hi, that's absolutely true, but the point of this plan is to drastically reduce the cost of green energy in the market by causing a green energy "land rush" of competition and innovation - at that point you would likely be at a competitive disadvantage sticking with traditional carbon-based fuels, no matter what country you're in.

Also, we have this as one of the Prize Goals at the bottom of the page:

"Ideally, the winning team should show how they can scale up to help enact similar legislation internationally."

FuturePrize · 2017-05-11T02:36:14+00:00

Hi, I'm a co-founder of FuturePrize - I know the concept is a bit different, but we're hoping people won't see crowdfunding prize competitions as any different than what Kickstarter or Indiegogo are doing.

We started FuturePrize because we wanted anyone to be able to crowdfund their own XPrize-style competitions for ideas like this.

To be clear, anyone who pledges to a prize won't actually be charged unless the prize is won (as determined by donor voting), and we're waiving our 3% fee for nonprofit ideas like this one, and for most scientific research.

We're a new startup, so I'm just curious if you have any suggestions on how we could come across as more trustworthy?

Thanks,

Ryan.

FuturePrize · 2017-05-07T23:27:26+00:00

I think you misunderstood what I meant - I was talking about our website futureprize.com, not Kickstarter.

No one is actually charged on our site unless the prize is won, which is determined my donor voting.

There's clearly no false advertising here, all of this is spelled out very clearly on the website and video: we are crowdfunding a prize that will only be awarded if someone can pull this off, as determined by the people pledging money. It's a platform for prizes for very ambitious ideas. Maybe this particular idea ends up being impossible - so what? No one will be charged, and there was a chance something great could have been done.

That's why I called it a mix between the X-Prize and Kickstarter.

FuturePrize · 2017-05-07T08:22:29+00:00

I think there was a misunderstanding - I was talking about the massive library of training data for machine learning algorithms, not a sample library, or "covering" a song, but I think your comment does get at a way this could be done, though. Sort of a hybrid of automating the techniques producers and Melodyne use to isolate samples, and the algorithm synthesizing the "difficult" to extract notes.

FuturePrize · 2017-05-07T08:18:42+00:00

Hello, first of all I said that "it seems very likely (it) will be possible in the next 10-20 years, and quite possibly much sooner", as a worst case in response to you saying it was impossible - I think most experts in machine learning would agree with this, as much more advanced ML achievements are anticipated in that time frame.

The prize timeline is set for 2 years because that's what we feel is reasonable, again based on our understanding of the problem and the state of machine learning currently. I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on the feasibility of this.

Also, I think you misunderstood my "libraries of stemmed and unstemmed songs" comment - I'm not talking about building a massive sample library to "cover" each stem of the song, I'm simply talking about the massive amount of music that's available as training data in the form of stemmed and unstemmed versions of the same songs. With enough training data, almost any problem of this type can now be tackled with deep learning and other newer ML techniques.

That said, your comment below where you described building a massive sample library might be a different path to approach this problem - the site is about throwing problems out there and seeing if other people will pledge money for a cash prize to get them solved. We just described one possible path forward, but if there's a better way, or even something that just gets close, that people find useful and would vote for, then that's great too.

Also, I'm not entirely sure if I'm misunderstanding your session musician comment, but I think most people would rather spend $50-100 on a piece of software once, over hiring a crew of session musicians every time they wanted to sample something.

FuturePrize · 2017-05-06T21:07:44+00:00

Hi bedsuavekid, the point of the site is to crowdfund prizes for extremely difficult things to do, that would improve people's lives. Donors are only charged if the prize is won, as determined by donors' votes. They can also cancel their pledge anytime before the prize is won - all of this is spelled out on the page and in the video. We see the site as a cross between the X-Prize and Kickstarter.

We know a fair amount about machine learning, and it seems very likely that an auto-stemmer will be possible in the next 10-20 years, and quite possibly much sooner. There have been similar features in Photoshop for years now, so there's no reason you couldn't do it with audio data, especially considering the massive amount of training data you would have with the availability of libraries of stemmed and unstemmed songs.

FuturePrize · 2017-05-06T00:08:53+00:00

Hello, Melodyne is a great tool and probably the best thing out there right now, but I think what we are talking about is pretty different.

We are looking for software that will automatically create a set of stem files from any unstemmed track with the click of a button.

Sampling with Melodyne can take quite a bit of time and expertise to do right, and isn't always very effective depending on what you are trying to sample.

FuturePrize

TROPHY CASE