In The Arena by TechArena - Using an AI Powered Nose to Detect Fires Before They Start with Dryad Networks

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

TechArena host Allyson Klein chats with Carsten Brinkshulte, CEO of Dryad Networks, about his company’s mesh network solution aimed at alerting forest fires before ignition, how his team tapped IOT and AI technology to develop their solution, and his aim to deploy hundreds of thousands of sensors in forests across the globe in 2024.

Welcome to the Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Alison Klein and we're coming to you from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I am so delighted to be joined by Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Dryad Networks. Welcome to the program. Carsten, why don't you just go ahead and introduce yourself, your background and a little bit about Dryad Networks. Yeah, so my background is telecommunications. I guess I've spent about 20 years in this industry.

I've had three startups doing mobile email and messaging as well as IT network infrastructure. I sold the company to BlackBerry and the last company to Twilio. Nice. And after that, I sat a bit bored, didn't know what to do, ended up doing Dryad. Now, I need to ask about your name because I came across some information while I was doing research. Tell us about the inspiration for Dryad.

Well, I've sold the company to Twilio and then you fall into a hole and really don't know what to do for a while. And we had lots of fire in the news in 2018, Amazon and California. And also in Europe, we had the Fridays for Future movement and my daughter was going on the street protesting and all of that kind of came together and clicked and I felt like, okay, what can you with your background do

to help in this context of climate change? And wildfires are a huge impact on climate change. So I felt, let's do something about it. And once you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. So we're applying telecoms and IoT for the problem of wildfires and climate change. I wanted to talk to you so much. My own area that I live in, the Pacific Northwest of the United States, has been hit by so many wildfires and we've seen its devastation. Your technology is a real game changer in this space. Can you just tell us the approach you've taken? Yeah, the approach we've taken is a different one. Normally people think about satellites or cameras for fire detection and that makes a lot of sense.

But we've taken a different approach. We have created what I would call an electronic nose and that we stick into the forest and that electronic nose, the gas sensor, can smell fires in its infancy. So when they're still very small and so we call it ultra early detection of wildfires and that enables firefighters to extinguish fires before they spread out of control. That's incredible. When you look at the early detection that you're able to accomplish, can you just give us a sense of what does this mean in terms of acceleration of time between fire detection

and actual action from responders? Yes. So we aim to and we are able to detect fires at the smoldering phase. So let's say somebody throws a cigarette and then within the next 30, 60 minutes you have a smoldering fire which then eventually develops into a real fire and then into a mega fire if it's not treated or responded. We want to detect fires at the smoldering phase, so within

the first minutes after ignition and not after hours. And that basically enables firefighters, when they get to the scene, to extinguish a fire with relative little resources, not requiring big planes and thousands of liters of water. Now, I know that you've probably researched this, so I'm going to ask the question. Some would argue fires are a natural part of a forest life cycle, but we're not living in normal times. So tell me why this technology is so important now. Well, I mean, in general, wildfires are natural and are even good for the ecosystem. Some trees even need it for growing. But the problem is the extent of wildfires that we're seeing

and the frequency of fires that we're seeing is not natural anymore. And in particular, what we want to aim at is to prevent human-induced fires because they're anything else but normal and good. So basically accidents, reckless behavior, arson, technical faults, those we want to put an end to. That's what we want to stop. Now many companies have envisioned how technology can help us navigate our changing landscape but you are unique because you've actually deployed your technology. Tell me about that and what have you seen in terms of impact now that the technology is out in force?

We're still relatively new. We just started selling after three years of development last year. We've sold 19,000 sensors, so that's already quite a good start. We've deployed in 50 installations in Southern Europe, Greece, Spain, Portugal, but also even in California. And we are aiming for Canada. We are now going to Chile.

So we have multiple deployments that are some small, some scaling. In terms of impact, we detected our first fire in December last year, actually in the Lebanon, where we have a pilot deployment and our system automatically detected and alerted for a fire that there was a farmer that was burning wooden material in the forested area, which is strictly forbidden. And our sensors detected it so early that he just got told off, nothing bad happened. Now tell me about the electronic nose. What is the technology that you actually developed there and how did you come to this being the solution that you wanted to focus on?

Yeah, the intention was to detect fires as early as possible. And that means before there was a flame, before there are huge smoke plumes. And so we felt like the only thing we can do is to do what you do as a human. You can smell a fire. And so we searched for how you can do an electronic nose. And there are gas sensors that can actually detect hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and VOCs at very small concentration. And then we added machine learning into the sensors to detect the patterns that the gas sensor sees. So you could say we're using AI on the edge to detect the virus. That's fantastic. Now, we're at MWC, obviously, in Barcelona.

It's the world's largest network conference. What is Dryad's message for MWC24? And are you announcing anything new here? A key thing of the Dryad SilverNet solution is the mesh network infrastructure. So the sensors can detect the fire but then they have to communicate to alert and in the forest you typically have no 4G because it doesn't make sense for the operators to do so. So we created a solar-powered mesh networking infrastructure based on LoRaWAN, the IoT industry standard, and

we deploy that in the forest. So we create the Internet of Trees, if you want, as the core network infrastructure. That's also why we're here at Mobile World Congress, because we are a network infrastructure supplier for the forest. We want to connect the natural world with IoT and help protect it from fires, but also other things. And I think we're a good example of how telecom technology can be green tech. Yes. I mean, my mind went in so many different spaces when you talked about the fact that you're deploying a network in the forest

in terms of other use cases as well that that network might be able to provide. Absolutely. So we're starting with FHIR, which is a great application. But we have created this network infrastructure as a generic IoT infrastructure. So we have plans and interest in soil moisture, chainsaw detection, tree growth, subflow, and maybe even communication systems for forest workers. So this is a generic IoT network infrastructure, not for your YouTube videos, but for IoT in the forest. Now, you talked about the success that you've had in market thus far. It seems like a really good start for the company.

What does 2024 hold for broad deployment of Dryad solutions and anything you can point to there? Well, we already have 15 installations. Most of them are still small. And now the goal is to make them big. We want to grow to hundreds of thousands of sensors this year. And that's a big ambition. So we're investing into manufacturing, scaling. That's basically what we do this year, as well as building additional applications for the network.

Where can folks find out more about Dryad Network Solutions and connect with your team? We've got a website, obviously, dryad.net. We're on LinkedIn. I'm happy to talk to anyone who's interested in working with us because we go to market with resellers. So we don't sell typically direct. We work with partners that bring our solutions to the countries. I love this use case and love that you guys have created this technology. It's really cool. I am definitely going to be following you guys. And as soon as you have more information, we'd love to have you back on the show. Thank you. Thanks for the time today. Thank you.

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