About Us
BTRC, Beta Technology Research Corporation, founded in 1994, was an industry-specified consulting firm providing related techniques such as CAD/CAE/CAM for mold-makers, power plants, auto-part makers, and the general agent of FARO products in Taiwan for 20 years.
In 2014, BTRC began to file a patent application for an escape device that could massively rescue people from high-rise buildings in the event of fire, and it took three times patent defense to get BTRC’s TPS patent first granted by the USPTO in 2016. In the next two to three years, the worldwide countries of crowded high-rise buildings, including China, EU, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Dubai, Qatar, etc. consecutively granted us the BTRC’s TPS patent through several times of patent defense as well.
In 2019, we proceeded to design and manufacture the TPS (Tunneled Parachute System) prototype, and in 2022, very successfully got a test result that the TPS rescue parachute steadily descended from a high altitude down to ground level as the prediction of its computational simulation.
The product is currently undergoing security testing as well as performance improvement. Meanwhile, we have scheduled to apply for the certifications of EN 12491 (European standard) and USPA (United States Parachute Association).
From 2023, we have started to participate in several fire rescue exhibitions, and held several presentations on up-to-date fire escape and rescue technologies in China, the USA, Europe and the United Arab Emirates. Besides, the TPS rescue systems will be commercialized in late 2024.
Rescue Parachutes
Self-rescue TPS (Tunneled Parachute System)
This TPS high-rise building escape system is designed for people to carry out self-rescue missions in the event of fire.
Delivery drones have several key features
1. Transport in three dimensions that overcomes ground limitations and ensures timely delivery
One of the greatest benefits of delivery drones is their ability to fly over obstacles like mountains and territorial waters, and navigate through high-rise building cities to deliver goods and supplies to hard-to-reach locations.
Drones have the ability to travel through the sky using the most direct route, which helps avoid delivery delays caused by road construction or traffic jams.
Moreover, in emergency rescue operations, precise time management is absolutely vital to swiftly transport injured individuals and safely evacuate people.
2. Accurate positioning
Real-Time Kinematics (RTK) is an advanced satellite positioning technique that enhances data accuracy by utilizing a ground station with a known location. When integrated into a drone, RTK combines position data from both virtual and physical base stations to provide real-time corrections to the drone's camera location. This technology ensures centimeter-level accuracy, embedding precise location data directly into aerial images during flight.
With dual RTK positioning modules activated, the drone achieves centimeter-level precision, delivering a horizontal accuracy of ±10 cm and a vertical accuracy of ±10 cm.
3. Dual operation modes (autonomous and manual flights)
Flight modes can be either manual or autonomous. Manual flight mode uses the controller's joysticks to control the drone's movements—such as pitch, roll, and yaw —while offering a first-person view (FPV) and map location. In contrast, the autopilot manages all essential tasks for safe flying, including fully automated take-off, parachute recovery landing, Return-to-Base, and navigation to multiple waypoints.
UAV autopilot systems enable autonomous operations, allowing UAVs to be used for a variety of purposes such as surveillance, reconnaissance, delivery, and inspection. As a result, UAVs with autopilot systems can provide increased safety, reliability, and efficiency and greatly reduce the risk of human error or fatigue, resulting in a safer operation.
4. Goods transported by using hooks and containers
Current drone technology includes payload bays and automated release systems to ensure safe packages during loading, unloading, and delivery.
5. Safety features and collision avoidance
The UAV is equipped with an obstacle avoidance system, including sensors for detection and real-time data processing for collision avoidance, to ensure the safe transportation of goods to the specified user-designated location.
6. Overnment regulatory measures for high-altitude drone flights (USA)
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved that all commercial drone operators can fly their drones both within visual line of sight and beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). BVLOS refers to flying a drone when the remote pilot cannot see it directly. In other words, the pilot relies on instruments or technology to monitor and control the drone at all times.
To conduct BVLOS flights legally, operators must obtain a waiver, demonstrating safe operations while considering air traffic, terrain, and potential obstacles. The FAA's regulations ensure that BVLOS flights do not pose risks to other aircraft or people on the ground.
With the rapid advancement of drone AI technology, BTRC has integrated heavy-duty drones with its Tunneled Parachuting Systems (TPS) to perform fire rescue missions in high-rise buildings. When the building management center or the city fire department receives an SOS message indicating that individuals need to escape a fire, they utilize satellite positioning systems, such as GPS or the Beidou coordinate system, to determine the precise location (longitude, latitude, and altitude).
Upon receiving an urgent SOS message, one or two sets of TPS can be delivered directly to the designated location using either automatic navigation and positioning mode or a combination of automatic navigation with close-range manual operation. The escapees must quickly open the package and follow the operating procedure. The TPS will then safely transport them from the fire site and land them in a secure location.
When the municipal fire department and the high-rise management center transport high-altitude escape equipment to the specified location (longitude, latitude, altitude) in a high-rise fire area, they are required to use Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) technology approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), such as DJI FlyCART 30, JOUAV PH-20, and Draganfly Heavy Lift Drone. This technology enables the detection and avoidance of obstacles in the flight paths.
In case of a fire, individuals without mobile phones may struggle to communicate their location. To solve this, BTRC has created a Regional Precision Positioning System (RPPS) for high-rise buildings, aiding building management centers and city fire departments in locating those in distress during emergencies.
FAQ
What You Need to Know
Q1. How many high-rise buildings are there in the world?
A high-rise is defined as a reinforced concrete structure at least 35 meters (115 ft) or 12 stories tall. As shown in the list below, there are more than 700,000 high-rise buildings above 35m in height and about 25,000 high-rise buildings above 100m in height around the world.
https://list.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_cities_with_the_most_high-rise_buildings
According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, there is a list of top 50 ranking cities in the world which have completed 4,988 high-rise buildings and proceeded constructing 531 high-rise buildings in 2022 that are taller than 150 m (492 ft). The details are listed as follows
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_the_most_skyscrapers
The table below shows that the world's top 5 countries with high-rise buildings over 150 meters.
Rank1 Rank2 Rank3 Rank4 Rank5
country China US Arab Emirates South Korea Japan
300M 3,088 875 325 276 273
200M 1,035 235 146 79 47
150M 107 31 34 7 3
Q2. What is the most effective method of evacuation from high-rise building fires?
The higher the floor, the more difficult the rescue operation definitely is. Up to now, conducting the evacuation tasks of high-rise buildings in the event of fires are clearly classified into two types:
(1) Structured dependent evacuation of using indoor egresses such as stairs, elevators and outdoor equipment such as controlled decent devices, escape chutes and platform rescue systems
(2) Non-structured dependent evacuation of using only outdoor equipment such as UAVs, helicopters, rescue air cushions, parachutes
Moreover, a successful fire evacuation depends on the plan that you take to overcome the following complicated factors: (a) the numbers of evacuees, (b) the dangers of fire flame and smoke, (c) the flame dimensions and the location in which the fire starts, (d) the exit routes of stairs, elevators and windows that are possibly obstructed or due to power outage, (e) the cost of evacuation devices, and (f) the difficulty level of using evacuation devices.
In general, the above-mentioned solutions to most high-rise building (for example, 3~20 floors of less than 70 meters) evacuations in the event of fire are functional, workable, but insufficient, inappropriate, and then completely out of control if the buildings are taller than 150 meters, even up to 10,000meters in the proceeding of construction.
Therefore, we urgently need a more advanced external evacuation device that is not attached to high-rise building, nor unusable due to power outage, and can simultaneously evacuate a large number of trapped people from the fire scene.
Q3. We can use drones to put out fires. Can we use drones or helicopters to evacuate people from the fire scenes of high-rise buildings??
It depends. They can be used for particular rescue missions like evacuating the disabled, the elderly persons and others. Helicopters have many limitations including (a) cost-effectiveness in equipment capacity and manpower, (b) limitation of approaching evacuation space (e.g. only on top floor) (c) less capability to perform a massive evacuation task and (d) bad visibility due to smoke that makes landing difficult when performing the evacuation plans of high-rise buildings.
Q4. How much time do residents, office workers, and tourists have to escape from high-rise buildings in the event of fire?
Evacuees will confront a dangerous journey to get down to the ground level. As reported by a subsequent US government investigation, 70% of evacuees were challenged to face crowding on the stairs while the remaining evacuees helplessly chose elevators to leave fire scenes.
Therefore, Evacuation time seems less important in small fires during evacuation. If there is a big fire breaking out in a taller high-rise building, the Available Safe Evacuation Time (ASET) is very much important for the evacuees who decide to use correct escape routes and evacuation equipment. In other words, it will affect whether you can successfully escape from the fire scene
Q5. Should the residents, the office workers and the tourists of high-rise buildings know what escape equipment they have to correctly use in case of an accidental fire?
There are several decisive factors which are, first, the location of igniting fire, second, the overall size of the continuous burning fire, third, the floor where you stay is below or above the igniting fire floor, fourth, the number of fire escapees, fifth, the types of evacuation devices been installed to high-rise buildings.
For most accidentally regional and small fires of high-rise buildings, it is flexible to choose internal evacuation stairs or elevators to escape from the fire scenes. If most of above-mentioned factors occur, selecting an external evacuation device, such as escape chutes, platform rescue systems, or controlled descent devices, that the high-rise building has installed is highly recommended.
So far, it seems less alternative external evacuation devices and techniques (refer to the following websites) available to performing massive fire evacuations from a high-rise building over 100 meters, even up to 1000 meters high.
This is a matter of life and death that in case people staying inside super high-rise buildings encounter accidentally catastrophic fires due to terrorist attacks, earthquakes, cigarette butts or short-circuit. Therefore, don't ignore that catastrophic accidents may happen.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378437121008876
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ace/2019/1659325/
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/kasai/67/2/67_93/_pdf/-char/ja
Q6. Are there governmental regulations and codes of external emergency evacuation equipment for high-rise buildings?
After the catastrophic fire at the New York Twin towers came across on September 11, 2001, the US NFPA, NIST, and ASTM recommended that, in addition to stairs and elevators being the basic escape egresses/routes, several external evacuation systems, including (1) Escape Chutes, (2) Platform Rescue Systems, and (3) Controlled Descent Devices, are used to supplement unusable egresses and the lack of escape techniques or malfunctional devices.
For instance, the platform rescue system shall comply with ASTM E2513, Standard Specification for high-rise building External Evacuation Platform Rescue Systems, or an approved, equivalent product safety standard. The controlled descent device shall comply with ASTM E2484, Standard Specification for high-rise building External Evacuation Controlled Descent Devices, or an approved, equivalent product safety standard.
Contact us
Production Director John Liao
Marketing Manager Royce Huang
No. 1379, Sec. 1, Huanzhong E. Rd., Beitun Dist., Taichung City 406 , Taiwan (R.O.C.)
btrc1994@gmail.com
William Liao TW (+886) 978079300
John Liao US (+1) 7148860584 Royce Huang US(+1) 2137166453