Taoglas helps Pano AI expand coverage and reliability for their wildfire monitoring network

About PANO AI (Pano)

Pano helps fire districts, municipalities, utility companies, and other organizations detect emerging wildfires before they escalate into major disasters. Using a combination of hardware, software, and artifical intelligence, Pano continuously monitors a geographic region for threats and provides fire authorities with actionable intelligence so that they can quickly detect, assess, and contain wildfires while they are still small.

The Challenge

Pano places monitoring stations on high vantage points across a geographic region, creating a network of ultra-high-definition (UHD) cameras which rotate continuously to provide a real-time 360 degree view of the landscape. Each Pano Station needs an ultra-reliable, ultra-fast connection in order to provide UHD imagery to Pano’s AI engine for analysis. That’s challenging in any environment, but it’s taken to the extreme atop remote mountains and deep within forests, where cellular coverage is weak. With a weak signal, Pano would struggle to upload gigabytes of continously generated UHD imagery and associated data.
Many fire-prone locations also are in areas with extreme weather conditions, such as high heat, bitter cold and strong winds. All of that can wreak havoc on the camera’s antenna, as well as its cable and connector.
When an antenna fails due to the elements, it instantly takes that camera offline, creating a wildfire blind spot in that region. Restoring connectivity also takes time — and money — because technicians with specialized skills are required to work safely on RF equipment in high locations.