A group of Okanagan university and college students have created an autobot that can detect underground wildfires that can smoulder unnoticed for months.

Engineering and science students from UBC Okanagan (UBCO) and Okanagan College (OC) recently returned from Boston where they demonstrated their creation at the MassRobotics Form & Function Robotics Challenge, one of the world鈥檚 leading student robotics development events.

鈥淥ur team knew that wildfires were a serious issue, but they kind of felt distant, something that happened to others, never to us,鈥� explained Aziz Rakhimov, a third-year UBCO electrical engineering student and product lead. 鈥淭hat all changed last summer when a wildfire reached 琉璃神社, threatened our campus and made us all leave our beloved city in a rush.鈥�

The experience motivated the UBCO HEAT Robotics team to create the Ember Mitigation Bot Responder (EMBR).

It uses a thermal camera, smoke sensor, temperature probe, and AI-driven analytics to navigate terrain, find concealed hotspots, and report their exact location.

鈥淥ur direct encounter with the threat of wildfires ignited a realization within us,鈥� Rakhimov said. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 enough to be passive observers. We are engineers, thinkers, creators, there had to be something we could do.鈥�

The team won the Audience Choice Award, outperforming entries from MIT, Stanford, Tufts, Cornell, Carnegie, and Harvard.

鈥淚t took a lot of amazing teamwork to build, refine, and program the bot,鈥� said Jonathan Chin, team coordinator and second-year mechanical engineering student at UBCO. 鈥淭his project has been an incredible opportunity to put to work all we have learned in our program.鈥�

The team had background support from UBCO, OC, West Coast Robotics Ltd., SOLIDWORKS, KF Aerospace, the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, AMD, Analog Devices, and CubePilot.

The team will continue to refine its design and look for additional funding through government grants and industry partnerships.

鈥淚n the future, EMBR could use an onboard water system or alternative methods, such as smothering embers with cool soil,鈥� Rakhimov added. 鈥淲e will also be researching other features such as topographical data analysis and using swarm tactics to have multiple rovers working together to cover more ground.鈥�

More information about EMBR, including sponsorship and partnership opportunities, is available on the .

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