One such company is Dryad Networks: a tech firm that's trained AI to “smell” a wildfire’s scent. The company's small, solar-powered AI sensors are hung from trees every 300 to 650 feet. These are combined with larger, solar mesh network gateways placed approximately every 2 miles to create a distributed fire-detection system that covers an entire forest and can be customized to detect a specific tree’s burn scent, cigarette smoke, or a harmless campfire.
“We basically use AI to reliably detect the smell of a fire and distinguish that from the smell of, say, a diesel truck coming by,” Dryad CEO and Co-Founder Carsten Brinkschulte tells PCMag.