AFF for Grid Smart Dust Drop

AFF stands for Automated Flight Following System, which is used in aerial fire fighting to insure that the fire retardant is dropped in the drop zone even though with the smoke the visibility is very low making it difficult to see. As one aircraft goes in another follows in behind it. This off the shelf technology has been used for over a decade now and with the advances of GPS accuracy and GIS modeling of surface terrain by satellite its uses should be incorporated into the laying of smart dust.

Smart dust are very tiny dust size mechanical electronic sensors. If you recall the movie Twister large mechanical electronic sensors were dropped as a tornado went by to track the storm on a computer. Smart Dust does the same thing but it is so small you can barely see it. By using the Automated Flight System and knowing the winds aloft we can lay smart dust by air using UAVs Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to drop the smart dust in front of a fire’s path to learn more about how it generates its own wind to help in wild fire trajectory tracking and prediction.

The smart dust can be dropped in a grid formation with perfect accuracy as the fire approaches or as the fire takes another region using circular grid “pie” approach dropping smart dust towards the hot center and carefully following the edges of the pie slice angles as needed after tabulating the winds aloft and the fire generated winds.

This will help us learn how fires spread based on current conditions, terrain and forces created by the fire itself. We already have the system and it works fine. Think on this.

Lance R. Winslow