{"id":31476,"date":"2025-10-31T06:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T06:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/31476\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T06:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T06:06:11","slug":"san-jose-students-advance-in-xprize-competition-with-wildfire-firefighting-system-nbc-bay-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/31476\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Students Advance in XPRIZE Competition with Wildfire Firefighting System \u2013 NBC Bay Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At Valley Christian High School in San Jose, a team of students known as Wildfire Quest is racing against time. They&#8217;ve advanced to the semifinals of the prestigious <a href=\"https:\/\/www.xprize.org\/competitions\/wildfire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">XPRIZE Wildfire<\/a> competition and have just days left to demonstrate their autonomous wildfire suppression system in a live-fire test before a panel of judges.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/vchs-xprize-2.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   alt=\" \"\/><\/p>\n<p>The team, part of VCHS&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vcs.net\/k-12-programs\/applied-math-science-engineering-institute\/amse-institute-high-school\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Applied Math, Science, and Engineering Institute<\/a>, is made up of twenty students, some of whom have been working on the project for the past four years. Their concept, a modular system of towers, drones, and base stations capable of detecting and extinguishing wildfires autonomously, was developed from scratch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInitially, we didn\u2019t have any guidelines,\u201d said Vishnu Parthasarathy. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what the requirements would be, what the constraints would be. So, we just spent the first year doing a whole bunch of research into potential suppression systems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/vchs-xprize-6.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   alt=\" \"\/><\/p>\n<p>The team partnered with <a href=\"https:\/\/kaizen.aero\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kaizen Aerospace<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/sensoryai.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sensory AI<\/a> to help bring their vision to life. Their system uses visible light and infrared cameras mounted on towers to detect fire. Once a fire is located, drones are dispatched to drop fire retardant and then return to base stations to reload.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWildfires are just everywhere in California,\u201d said Olivia Ahn. \u201cI grew up with wildfires, and it\u2019s exciting to be able to work toward a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/vchs-xprize-7.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   alt=\" \"\/><\/p>\n<p>During their live demonstration, the system performed as designed despite some early glitches. The judges did not issue a final decision, but they were reportedly \u201cvery impressed\u201d with the team\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of the outcome, the students say they\u2019re proud of what they\u2019ve accomplished. &#8220;The bottom line of our team is: do what you can, do what works, and try your hardest to make that happen,&#8221; Jacob Moses said. &#8220;And I think we did that today.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Group-Shot-at-Wrap.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   alt=\" \"\/><\/p>\n<p>The team will find out in December if they have advanced to the final round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Valley Christian High School in San Jose, a team of students known as Wildfire Quest is racing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[22978,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-31476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area-proud","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}