SEMFIRE: Towards a new generation of forestry maintenance multi-robot systems

Europe has been affected by an alarming number of wildfires every year, ravaging nearly half a million hectares of forestry areas and resulting in an unacceptable amount of human losses. The year 2017 was one of the worst ever recorded, with devastating wildfires raging across the globe. Bearing these shocking facts in mind, this position paper aims to lay the foundations of crucial new upcoming research in the field of forestry robotics by presenting an overview of the SEMFIRE project. SEMFIRE proposes the development of a robotic system designed to reduce the accumulation of combustible material in forests, thus assisting in landscaping maintenance tasks for wildfire prevention. This paper describes the multi-robot system envisaged by SEMFIRE, combined with pervasive local positioning, multi-robot navigation and coordination in forests, and an innovative artificial perception architecture.