South San Francisco, California – California experienced its worst fire season in 2020. Residents in the San Francisco Bay region contended with widespread smoke and smoky, orange-tainted skies.

Two men with no background in forestry, both residents of the region, decided to do something about it. Today their company, BurnBot, is bringing high-tech solutions to managing and treating landscapes to prevent and mitigate wildfires.

Dr. Anukool Lakhina and Dr. Waleed Haddad began working together that same year, introduced by a mutual acquaintance because they were interested in solving the problem of wildfires. Both men are involved in the day-to-day business operations of the company on a full-time basis.

Haddad and Lakhina both have a high level education and experience with technology, albeit in different areas.

Lakhina, who holds a PhD in computer science, is the CEO of BurnBot. He previously founded Guavus, a leader in real-time big data processing and analytics, which he sold to another company. He also co-founded Wonder Labs, a social enterprise whose mission is to catalyze social, ecological, and technological innovations with communities on the frontline of climate impacts.

Haddad, who has a PhD in physics, holds the title of chief technology officer of BurnBot. As an inventor he has more than 40 patents and has worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Vermeer Corporation.

Under their leadership BurnBot has developed some unique equipment for masticating vegetation, conducting controlled burning, and tapped into data analytics for planning and conducting landscape treatment operations.

Wesley Brinegar, BurnBot’s head of forestry, and Brittany Black, head of growth and partnerships, recently talked to TimberWest about the company’s innovations and operations.

Brinegar formerly owned his own company, High Sierra Timber Management, which was focused on fuels reduction for wildfire prevention and mitigation and based about 150 miles east of San Francisco on the western edge of the Stanislaus National Forest. His company did some work alongside BurnBot staff and began noticing their work. As he got to know some of them, they had mutual forester friends.

Through that connection, BurnBot made an offer to Brinegar earlier this year to acquire his business and put him on their staff. “BurnBot likes to make connections with each location they get into,” said Brinegar.

He was attracted to the idea of being part of a larger company that was able to treat more acres than he could with his business. “I thought it would be better to join them and support their vision to treat one million acres per year.”

The acquisition included Brinegar’s equipment – a Prinoth 500 track masticator, an assortment of excavators and other equipment and Fecon and Diamond Mowers mulching attachments – and his employees.

BurnBot has about 80 employees and also uses 15 contractors throughout the West. The contractors are mainly for overhead support functions and services. Equipment operators and other workers are BurnBot employees.

This year the company will treat more than 5,000 acres. At the start of the year it had more than 20,000 acres under contract for treatment. “We are doubling each year,” said Black. The company has ‘hub’ offices and facilities in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada.

BurnBot is set up and equipped to perform multiple forest planning and management services, from thinning to final harvest, and mastication. After thinning or logging operations it can follow up with controlled burning using a unique machine it developed or other methods. The company’s overarching goal is to dramatically scale up fuel treatments to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk while preserving natural environments.

“BurnBot’s goal is to bring technology to the forest on a large scale to help control catastrophic wildfire,” said Brinegar. “We also have an extensive forestry and logging division. We were awarded one of the largest projects in the county’s history, logging 14,000 acres and masticating 5,000 acres.”

The company is currently performing a contract for the Forest Service on the Stanislaus National Forest. The agency is issuing new types of contracts – integrated resource service contracts – to treat land from start to finish. Contractors are responsible for planning and preparation, surveys for archaeology, botany, and wildlife, road design, logging and mastication, followed by closing landings and roads. The goal is to treat more acres of federal land, creating a healthier, more wildfire resilient landscape. The Forest Service closely monitors all operations that contractors perform.

The BurnBot contract is for 14,000 acres, which is expected to produce about 21 million board feet of timber. “It’s the largest project the Forest Service has put out on the West Coast and maybe the country,” said Brinegar.

BurnBot has begun treating one section after doing all the planning and preparation, including designing roads, an archaeology study, and plans for logging and mastication, while two more sections are in the planning phase. The company expects to treat about 2,000 acres the first year of the contract.

BurnBot employees do the majority of the boots-on-the-ground work. For some higher level forestry skills, like timber cruising and archaeology surveys, the company subcontracts for those services; a partner business it uses for such services is Integrated Resource Management, an Oregon-based forestry and habitat restoration consulting firm.

One of the most interesting uses of technology is a patented machine that BurnBot developed in-house to perform controlled burning. The machine was designed and invented by Haddad. Originally dubbed the BurnBot, from which the company takes its name, it was rebranded the RX. The company has three of the machines, which it dubs the RX, and is building two more.

The machines, which move on tracks, are operated by remote control. It can be operated by one person although the company normally uses a crew of three. For safety reasons the machine is trailed by a Type 6 fire engine with fire suppression equipment and a water supply,

The RX has fans atop the machine that draw in air, which aids in the clean combustion process. Propane torches in the burn chamber can be adjusted for longer or shorter flames and varying temperatures. The machines produce almost no smoke or emissions because smoke is burned in the combustion chamber. The burn is controlled by a water spray system on the back end coupled with a heavy roller to extinguish any flames or embers.

The burn chamber reaches temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, pyrolysis begins: the chamber gets so hot that the propane torches can actually be shut off, as the retained heat is enough to ignite the vegetation. “It’s still combusting as it’s moving,” said Brinegar. “After reaching that temperature, it uses almost no propane.”

The machine can complete about 1–2 miles of controlled burn, or ‘black line,’ per day, creating a swath roughly 5–6 feet wide. It is typically used to establish a perimeter or control line around a tract of land. Once that perimeter is in place, other methods are used (such as aerial ignition) to conduct the controlled burn within the area. With this approach, the company can treat about 40 acres per day.

The benefits of the technology are self-evident. They are safer than traditional controlled burning, using hand-held torches to set fire – safer in terms of safer for people, and safer in terms of controlling the burning process. It is also cleaner since it produces so little smoke or emissions. They can be used in any conditions, and the process is precise.

The RX, although being used to perform controlled burning, is still in the testing and development stages. There has been a lot of government interest in the equipment, according to Black.

The U.S. Forest Service is very interested in the technology, according to Brinegar, and BurnBot has demonstrated the equipment for the agency. The Forest Service is particularly interested because the burn system is hot enough to kill seeds of invasive species that are in the soil. “That’s a humongous deal for them,” said Brinegar.

A study by the University of California-Berkley showed the RX burn treatment kills seeds of the yellow star thistle, a harmful invasive species that encroaches on meadows. In normal controlled burning, flames are not hot enough to accomplish that.

BurnBot has used the equipment to perform controlled burns for the California Department of Transportation as well as on power line rights-of-way.

The company uses technology in other ways, added Black, notably drones and imaging and data analysis software for land management and treatment. Drones take advanced images of a property. Using BurnBot systems and software from partner companies, the images are analyzed and the data is extrapolated to develop a production plan for how to treat the property, what equipment is required, and so on.

Drones are used in conjunction with the RX. They also are used to ignite controlled burns using the Ignis UAS system, which can safely burn up to 2,000 acres a day once control lines are put in place by the RX. The drones drop small balls of chemicals that ignite on impact with the ground to create small fires.

BurnBot also has a team of employees that operates remote mastication equipment. It uses small custom masticating machines manufactured by FAE, which makes specialty equipment for land-clearing, including track carriers and mulching and cutting attachments. The equipment is very lightweight yet high-powered and is being used to treat land in California, Oregon and Washington. “We can do areas that are largely inaccessible except for cutting by hand,” said Brinegar. “It’s really cool technology.”

Besides the FAE masticators, the company is equipped with an assortment of logging and mastication equipment from Prinoth, Caterpillar, and John Deere. “We’re not dedicated to a single supplier or dealer,” said Brinegar.

“Each landscape is very unique,” noted Black. “How do you solve the problem? How do you continuously manage lands – without breaking the bank, or your back – on a larger scale?”

BurnBot has evolved into several areas, noted Black. Its goal is to treat 1 million acres annually. The company also has a presence in Australia, where it has investors, and expects to have a machine working there by year’s end.

“To make a meaningful impact,” said Black,” you have to work with local communities to support them. We want to be a cooperative, collective partner…bring experts to the community from the technology side and help them treat more acres.”