Lesvos high-school students design prize-winning fire spotter
Designed by soon-to-be seniors Nikos Efstratiou and Vangelis Iordanou, the Fire Detecting Airplane took the top prize at the sixth edition of the Vodafone Foundation’s Panhellenic Generation Next competition, which invites school pupils to work in teams to develop technological solutions to society’s problems.
A devastating wildfire last summer inspired two students at the 5th General High School of Mytilene on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos to design a drone for detecting blazes.
“It’s much easier to put out a small fire and almost impossible when it has spread, so we thought of doing something that would spot a blaze in its early stages,” Nikos Efstratiou, who designed the aircraft with Vangelis Iordanou, told Kathimerini.
“The airplane we designed flies autonomously on predetermined routes, while it has an infrared camera that scans the ground for fires,” he added of the project, which took the top prize at the Vodafone Foundation’s recent Generation Next competition.
