Kenyan Students Turn to AI and Robotics to Fight Wildfires

The students are preparing to represent Kenya at the 2026 FIRST Global Challenge in Incheon, South Korea.

The competition will see students more than 190 countries come together to compete in a global robotics challenge.

The event is inspired by the world's 14 Grand Engineering Challenges will be one to behold.

This theme of the competition in 2026 focuses on wildfires. This subject is particularly important for the Kenyan team given the country has recently had to contend to forest fires with the most recent having been reported around the Mount Kenya forest.

The group have designed ASAL AI, which is an artificial intelligence agent with the ability to scan and identify areas at high risk of wildfires in Kenya. The agent is designed to score identified areas based on their level of vulnerability.

Team Kenya believes that the system can assist relevant authorities and communities to develop preventative measures in fighting forest fires in Kenya.

One of the proposed interventions involves the use of hydrogels placed in soil. The material can absorb rainwater and gradually release it during dry periods, potentially helping to keep areas moist and reducing conditions that contribute to the spread of fires.

But the innovation does not stop with AI.

Team Kenya has also developed a lightweight robot designed around the demanding requirements of the competition. The robot must be capable of being suspended above the ground during a simulated wildfire, making weight a critical consideration in its construction.

According to the team, developing the machine has been a long journey of experimentation, failure and redesign.

It has never been easy – with the group having spent months working on an initial design before abandoning it at the last minute after discovering that it was too heavy, lacked practical functionality and contained components that did not work as expected.