UAVs for drowning rescue
A team of scientists from the Technical University of Denmark, led by Dimosthenis Angelis, is developing an autonomous drone to search for people trapped overboard and help in their rescue. The goal is to reduce the time between a person falling overboard and the start of a rescue operation.
The weight of the drone is about 25 kg, the diameter is 2.4 m, the payload is 20 kg, the time spent in the air is about half an hour, and the area of the surveyed territory is about one square kilometer. There are three types of cameras installed on the drone — RGB, infrared and thermal imaging.
UAVs for drowning rescue
How it works. After receiving a signal about a person falling overboard, the UAV automatically takes off from the ship and heads to the disaster area. Specially developed algorithms analyze the weather situation, the presence of currents and the time since the fall, which allows you to find out the most likely location of the person in distress. After detection, a life jacket equipped with a GPS receiver is dropped from the drone. With its help, the victim will be able to stay on the water from 30 minutes to three hours, which facilitates further search and multiplies the chances of rescue. The main result: tests show that such a UAV can be effective in aerial search and rescue, especially in conditions of poor visibility. According to DTU, the results indicate that the rescue drone will be able to detect more than 80% of people in distress.
UAVs for drowning rescue
Alexander Ageev
