Search and rescue are an integral part of operations performed by air ambulance services around the world, especially when the terrain is tough to handle by ground rescue forces alone. All this could change with drones taking up the search part of the entire operation. This will be made possible by the drones designed by the researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, popularly referred to as MIT. Wireless communication and computation technology will form the basis of these drones. Although these drones are still in the concept stage, if implemented, they could supplement the task of air ambulance services effectively.
The Concept to Support Air Ambulance Services to be Presented Soon
The conference titled ‘International Symposium on Experimental Robotics’ will be the venue where the concept will be presented. The drones would be equipped with laser range finders and will be able to draw up a 3-dimensional map of tough terrain that will help air ambulance services. Among the key researchers of this concept is Yulun Tian who is a graduate student at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The Future of the Drone Research
Although not in the scope of the current presentation, eventually, the researchers hope that the drones will be able to tag the person in need of help in tough terrains. This will be made possible by object detection and matching it with missing persons.
The drone prototypes have already been tested through several simulations. In fact, it has been tested once in a dense forest area successfully. In this trial, two drones were able to map a radius of 20 square meters in just 5 minutes. If this concept sees the light of the day, the air ambulance services around the world will certainly become more efficient and will bring down the cost of search and rescue. For now, we will simply have to wait and watch.
