When Ethan Pretsch worked for a company that built temporary structures for large industrial projects, he kept running into the same frustrating roadblock: fire suppression. Data centers, manufacturing facilities, aviation hangars — they all needed fire protection, but traditional sprinkler systems were expensive to install, slow to activate and sometimes caused as much damage as the fires themselves.
“I went down this rabbit hole and found out there was absolutely nothing,” Pretsch told Cowboy State Daily, recalling his search for a technological solution. “I called one of the nation’s largest sprinkler companies, and they’re like, ‘Nope, but if you made anything like that, let us know.’” So he did.
In 2024, Pretsch founded WatchDog Robotics, a Jackson-based startup developing autonomous fire suppression systems that use robotic water turrets paired with infrared sensors to detect, target and extinguish fires in seconds rather than minutes, he said. The company’s flagship product, the NozzleBot, can detect a fire in two to four seconds and have water on target in eight to nine seconds, Pretsch said.
A typical wood fire can be extinguished in about 12 to 15 seconds. Traditional sprinkler systems, by comparison, take two to four minutes to activate. “A fire grows exponentially,” Pretsch said. “Every second it’s growing and growing and growing rapidly. So being able to extinguish it within 12 seconds of ignition is a massive game changer.”