Robotics Cats AI Detects Wildfires
Robotics Cats, a startup, has created a unique way - using AI - to help detect and prevent wildfires.
Wildfires are unplanned fires. While they may have some benefits for the local ecosystems, they can be devastating for property, people and communities. As such, wildfires near cities and towns pose increased danger.
Wildfires are a symptom of climate change. Extreme weather and drought are fueling global wildfires by increasing the fire season and size of affected areas. In the U.S, states like California now experience a fire season almost year round. About 25 percent of the state’s population live in high risk areas.
Early wildfire detection and environmental monitoring tools are key for community response and risk mitigation.
Technologies like Robotics Cats can help prevent or mitigate wildfire damage, danger and costs. Their cutting edge solutions can also help build community resilience and federal, state and local response capabilities. Robotics Cats was a semi-finalist in the 2021 QBE AcceliCITY Resilience Challenge.
We talked to Andre Cheung, Founder and CEO of Robotics Cats to find out the work he and the team are doing to help detect and prevent wildfires.
Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company
Andre Cheung: I am an explorer and I am interested in trying new things. I devoted most of my career to the telecom, SaaS, and cloud computing industries before I started Robotics Cats.
I met most of my teammates three years ago. They were developing a very powerful wildfire detection camera system. I founded Robotics Cats because I believe we would build a hardware-agnostic artificial Intelligence (AI) wildfire detection service that will help more people around the world to mitigate wildfire risks and damages.
Tell us about your company
Andre Cheung: Robotics Cats is a climate tech startup. We develop AI wildfire detection technologies that protect forests and communities and reduce carbon emissions in Asia, Americas, and Europe.
What is the problem/opportunity to be solved? What is your vision?
Andre Cheung: We want to mitigate the wildfire problem. Our vision is to build AI wildfire detection tools for governments, businesses, and people to reduce wildfire risks and damages.
How does your product/solution address the problem?
Andre Cheung: Our AI wildfire detection service works with cameras. It detects early-stage wildfires from the images, and sends alerts to users via mobile app and email.
Who are your customers/target market?
Andre Cheung: We target governments, businesses and consumer markets. We believe wildfire is a global challenge that requires everyone to use the right tools to solve the problem.
Do you have plans to do business with cities in the U.S.? If so, what cities would you like to collaborate with first?
Andre Cheung: Yes, we plan to enter the US market to help combat wildfires. We will start in Santa Cruz and other cities in California.
What is the serviceable market? Can your product/solution be expanded globally?
Andre Cheung: Unfortunately with climate change, we have more and bigger wildfires in more places around the world. Wildfires are a global problem. We build our products so they can scale to serve customers around the world.
At the moment, our focus is on Asia, Europe, North and South America. We're actively exploring the Africa market.
Have you had any lessons learned?
Andre Cheung: The most important lesson we learned is that wildfires are not a government problem. Wildfires are everyone's problem and everyone can help solve the challenge. We need different tools for different stakeholders to work together effectively to mitigate wildfire risks.
Tell us about your team.
Andre Cheung: There are five people on the team, including four IT engineers. We live in four cities in Asia-Pacific (APAC). We are excited that our products can help protect forests and communities on five continents.
How does your company innovate?
Andre Cheung: We break down big problems into smaller problems. We focus on solving those common small problems which can help more people quicker. We are a lean startup and everyone is important in bringing new ideas and asking questions. We prioritize things that the majority thinks make sense.
Who are your competitors? What makes you a better choice?
Andre Cheung: We have two types of competitors. One type is those camera-based wildfire detection system vendors which are in the market for more than 10 years. They are experienced and they focus on the plantation industry. The other types are startups founded in the last two years. They focused on different technologies: cameras, IoT, drones, or satellites.
We are a better choice because we are both old and new. We are old because we have 7 years of industry experience on average. We know the wildfire problems, the who's who, and market dynamics. We are new because we are keen to tackle the wildfire problem using the latest technologies such as: AI, IoT, crowd-sourcing, SaaS, 5G, edge-computing, etc.
What are your professional and educational backgrounds?
Andre Cheung: I studied computer engineering at university. I graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering.
After graduation, I spent 20 years in the telecom, SaaS and Cloud Computing industries. I worked for both local Asia-based companies as well global enterprises such as Cisco and Verizon.
What made you first interested in sustainable solutions?
Andre Cheung: The more customers and forests around the world I visited, the stronger the motivation for me to devote myself to sustainable solutions.
What do you like most about helping people, businesses, and the environment?
Andre Cheung: The answer is all of them. Climate change and wildfires are a global problem that you need to think about from a holistic perspective - and break down the big problem into small pieces which are solvable by a startup.
People, businesses, governments, and the environment are intertwined in the wildfire issue.
We have solutions designed for each type of customer:
- InsightFD integrated hardware and software system for governments,
- LookOut wildfire detection SaaS for businesses, and
- ReportFires web/mobile app for consumers.
Any advise for students that want to someday create a startup?
Andre Cheung: Start now! It is now the best time. The world needs urgent help!
Read more about Robotics Cats at: https://roboticscats.com
Paul Douglas, Contributor
Paul Douglas is passionate about helping people, businesses, and communities. As GovOneStop CEO and Founder, his vision is to improve the quality of life globally through better awareness and easier access to government and related non-profit information, resources and services.