AI, robots to stand guard against frequent livestock barn fires

South Chungcheong Province is moving to deploy AI and robots to prevent and detect fires at livestock barns across the province through a new AI-based fire-prevention system.

The provincial government announced Wednesday that its proposal for "development and demonstration of an affordable integrated fire-response system for early AI-based fire detection and suppression tailored to livestock barn environments" had been selected in the Ministry of Interior and Safety's competitive grant program for region-specific disaster safety technology development (Phase 2).

The selected project centers on developing an integrated system optimized for livestock barn conditions, covering AI-based early fire detection, initial suppression, livestock evacuation and automatic emergency reporting to 119, South Korea's fire emergency number.

Cheonan-based S.Solution, a company specializing in AI of Things and disaster safety, will lead the research and development effort, with AIPro, K-Response Robot and the Hoseo University industry-academic cooperation foundation joining as consortium partners.

The province will invest a total of 2.54 billion won in the project over two years and nine months through 2028, comprising 1.6 billion won ($1.09 million) in national government funding and 400 million won in local government funds.

The S.Solution consortium will first develop an intelligent arc (electrical spark) detector for installation in electrical panels as a preventive measure against barn fires.

The detector is designed to identify micro-arcs inside electrical panels within 0.5 seconds and cut off the power supply. For early fire detection, the consortium will also develop a barn-specific multimodal sensor combining visible-light and thermal imaging, along with an AI compound camera.

The AI compound camera and related equipment are designed to identify actual fires within five seconds with a false-alarm rate of no more than 5 percent, even in the harsh conditions inside livestock barns — including dust, water vapor and ammonia.

The S.Solution consortium will also build a system capable of initial fire suppression. The plan calls for developing an autonomous firefighting robot — an intelligent unmanned water cannon — linked to an AI camera and capable of precision water discharge with a fire-point targeting accuracy of 80 percent or higher, along with precision strike control technology.

To minimize damage and enable early suppression when a fire breaks out, the consortium will establish an intelligent evacuation guidance system and an integrated control platform. The intelligent evacuation guidance system combines livestock survival instincts with AI control, factoring in the fire's location and the direction of smoke spread to open and close doors and coordinate directional lighting, minimizing livestock deaths.

The integrated control platform will enable AI-driven autonomous decision-making and fire suppression to proceed automatically even during network outages or power failures, while simultaneously relaying real-time updates to 119.

After completing system development, the S.Solution consortium will install the full "early detection–automatic suppression–integrated control" system at three pig and poultry farms in Cheonan, Hongseong and one other location as a living-lab pilot, conduct more than three months of demonstration testing, and carry out real-fire verification with the local fire departments. Through this process, the consortium plans to secure objective reliability data for the system and obtain official certification for commercialization.

Once the technology is deployed in the field, the province expects it to deliver four key benefits: securing proprietary AI technology specialized for extreme environments; localizing an intelligent unmanned firefighting system; preventing more than 90 percent of livestock barn fire damage through early detection and suppression to protect the regional economy; and establishing an early foothold in the market for an affordable K-safety package.

"This technology will serve as a guardian for small-scale livestock farmers who are far from fire stations and struggle to secure the golden time for response," said Shin Dong-heon, the province's director of autonomous safety administration. "After development and demonstration, we will work to expand it province-wide by linking it to the livestock barn modernization project."

Livestock barn fires in the province totaled 280 over the past five years — 54 in 2021, 66 in 2022, 53 in 2023, 55 in 2024 and 52 last year — with property damage tallied at 23.3 billion won.

Electrical factors were the leading cause of ignition, accounting for 142 cases, or 50.7 percent, followed by negligence at 48 cases (17.1 percent) and mechanical factors at 38 cases (13.6 percent).