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October 7th, 2024

Homemade AI Drone Software Finds People When Search and Rescue Teams Can't

British Mountain Rescue teams have created AI drone software to improve search and rescue operations, successfully tested during the search for missing hillwalker Charlie Kelly, enhancing efficiency in challenging terrains.

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Homemade AI Drone Software Finds People When Search and Rescue Teams Can't

British Mountain Rescue teams have developed an innovative AI drone software designed to enhance search and rescue operations. This technology was notably utilized in the case of Charlie Kelly, a hillwalker who went missing in September 2023. Despite extensive search efforts involving helicopters, sniffer dogs, and traditional drones, Kelly's body was not found until six weeks later when two MR team members, Dan Roach and David Binks, tested their newly developed software. This software automates drone flight paths and image analysis, allowing for more efficient searches in challenging terrains. The system was built as an add-on to an existing program called MR Maps, which tracks rescue team members in real-time. The software's effectiveness lies in its ability to photograph the ground with significant overlap, ensuring that objects are captured from multiple angles, thus improving the chances of locating missing individuals. The development of this technology highlights the potential for drones to revolutionize search and rescue operations, particularly in remote areas where traditional methods may fall short.

- AI drone software enhances search and rescue efficiency.

- The software was successfully tested in the search for missing hillwalker Charlie Kelly.

- It automates flight paths and image analysis for better coverage.

- The system builds on existing technology used for tracking rescue teams.

- Drones are becoming essential tools in locating missing persons in challenging terrains.

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Link Icon 13 comments
By @0_____0 - 7 months
It's basically the FREE POINT square on the bingo card at this point. When someone builds a cool robot that they don't know what to do with, it's inevitably for SAR. I've worked on a couple of them myself.
By @zero_k - 7 months
Search And Rescue (SAR) is sometimes VERY political. We build long-range RC airplanes to help find boats in distress at sea on the Mediterranean [1]. As you might expect, we could do 10x better, with less resources, if the powers that be wouldn't make it impossible to e.g. launch from an island and return to an island. So we launch from a boat, because it's not national territory and they can't make it impossible.

Shameless Plug: If you wanna join, let us know. We definitely would benefit from better on&off-board image recognition. But there are many, less buzzword-y, challenges as well: designing, building & testing airplanes, training pilots, delivering planes & batteries (challenging due to Watt-Hour restrictions), remote issue debugging, etc.

[1] https://tha.de/searchwing/

By @isx726552 - 7 months
Put weapons on it (as already seen in current conflicts) and it becomes a seek-and-assassinate tool. Drones are cheap enough it could even be done en masse. It is a scary future, and it’s not far away at all.
By @vzaliva - 7 months
Satellite SOS, recently introduced in iPhone and Google Pixel phones, will help a lot with lost hiker cases. However, drone-based search will still be useful in case the hiker broke the phone or is too incapacitated to use it.
By @pgraf - 7 months
I don‘t see any hint of AI being used here, but rather a handcrafted computer vision algorithm. Can anyone more involved in the matter elaborate if there was an actual AI model used?
By @inexcf - 7 months
Everyone is thinking the same thing reading that headline. In a stroke of comedic genius the link still says "bodies" instead of "people".
By @westurner - 7 months
{Code-and-Response, Call-for-Code}/DroneAid : "DroneAid: A Symbol Language and ML model for indicating needs to drones, planes" (2010) https://github.com/Code-and-Response/DroneAid .. https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#story-22707347 :

CORRECTION: All but one of the DroneAid Symbol Language Symbols are drawn within upward pointing triangles.

Is there a simpler set of QR codes for the ground that could be made with sticks or rocks or things the wind won't bend?

By @Sparkyte - 7 months
I have always wanted to get into robotics. Maybe my next evolution in stuff is robotics. I'm starting to get tired of big corporate software engineering.

These silly things are neat. I'm also really interested in the snake/worm robots that dig to find people and inflate to move rubble.

By @idunnoman1222 - 7 months
It’s a long article and I’m on mobile. Do they link the code or not?
By @tay_bridge - 7 months
As somebody familiar with the area described in the article I cannot fathom how somebody could be lost, conscious (article mentions messages were exchanged) for so long.
By @modhash - 7 months
Does anyone know if there is something similar to this open source?
By @catskul2 - 7 months
> The weather was unusually mild for the season, and Kelly thought he might even have time to “bag” a second Munro,

I really hate when people use very uncommon terms without defining them. (or sometimes even people's names)

It's not that I couldn't make a guess based on context, but it's distracting, and I feel like my eyes must have skipped over something and I often keep going back over the text to see what I must have missed reading.

I imagine this is sometimes caused by sloppy editing, especially when they refer to a last name of a person who has yet to be introduced in the article, but I think sometimes it's a deliberate choice and I object.