AURA

Swarm-engineered, AI-powered UAVs for early wildfire detection and rapid suppression — scalable, affordable, and field-tested with UK partners.

Semifinalist — XPRIZE Wildfire (Autonomous Wildfire Response Track)

Explore the Tech Meet the Team

📍 Bristol, UK · 🛡 XPRIZE Team

Swarm

Suppression

Detection

Autonomy

Resilience

Scalable

Open

Affordable

XPRIZE Wildfire

XPRIZE Wildfire is a 4‑year, $11M global competition driving innovation to end destructive wildfires. It runs two synergistic tracks: Space‑Based Detection & Intelligence (Track A) and Autonomous Wildfire Response (Track B).

In Track B, teams must autonomously detect and completely suppress a high‑risk fire within 10 minutes across 1,000 km², while ignoring decoys. The purse is $5M.

Team Description

Team AURA brings together a consortium of the University of Bristol, University of Sheffield and Lancashire Fire and Rescue Services. Since 2022, we have been developing technology to improve firefighters’ capabilities against wildfires, focusing on swarms of UAVs for monitoring, early detection, and suppression.

We have demonstrated capabilities in swarm coordination, AI-based wildfire detection, and aerial suppression with fire retardant payloads.

Core Innovation

Heterogeneous Swarm Autonomy: independent drones collaborate to search for fires and extinguish them in under 10 minutes.

AI-based detection for realtime classification of fires.

Scalable & Open: off‑the‑shelf hardware + open‑source ML frameworks.

Consortium

University of Bristol
University of Sheffield
Lancashire Fire and Rescue

Core Team Members

Prof. Sabine Hauert — Team Lead (U. Bristol), Professor of Swarm Engineering
Prof. Tom Richardson — Drone Operations (U. Bristol), Professor of Aerial Robotics
Dr. Georgios Tzoumas — Swarm System Engineer (U. Bristol)
Mr. Yinan Shi — Drone Engineer (U. Bristol)
Mr. Kilian Meier — Drone Engineer (U. Bristol)
Prof. Lyudmila Mihaylova — Computer Vision Lead (U. Sheffield)
Mr. Aditya Mahendra Shrikhande — Computer Vision Engineer (U. Sheffield)
Mr. Tim Murrell — Firefighting Advisor (Lancashire Fire and Rescue)

Get in Touch

We welcome collaborations with academia and industry partners. Reach out to explore how AURA can help protect wildfire‑prone regions.