China's drone-led search for earthquake survivors

Earlier this month, first responders in China used drones to determine the hardest-hit areas following a massive earthquake that killed more than 600 people, in one of the first displays of how drones can be used during emergency situations.

One of the great promises of drones is the technology's inherent ability to be flown above a disaster site, giving first responders a survey of the situation and allowing them to direct where to send aid to. But, until now, that's been more of a theoretical benefit of drones—very few people have actually used them in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Take, for instance, the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan last year in the Philippines: Tons of search and rescue helicopters, but not a single drone, searched for survivors.



Well, after an earthquake hit Yunnan, China, earlier this month, rescue workers there called up Hong Kong's DJI (the largest commercial drone manufacturer in the world), and asked its pilots for help.

"We sent a team of pilots to assist the China Association for Disaster and Emergency Response Medicine following the earthquake. This was the first time [the country] used [drones] in its relief efforts and as a result many of the cooperating agencies and bodies working on site have approached us for training / using UAS technology in the future," Michael Perry, a spokesperson for the company, told me in an email.

Perry said that the drones were able to relay images back to rescue workers, who used them to determine which roads needed to be cleared first and which areas of the rubble to search for possible survivors.

"Aerial images captured by the team were used by workers in the epicenter area of Longtoushan, where most of the traditional buildings in the area collapsed," the company said. "The dense rubble and vegetation have made ground surveying extremely difficult, so using aerial images has helped identify where relief teams can focus on searching for survivors."

It's not clear if the drones directly helped save any lives (and granted, everything we know about the aerial imaging effort in this case is coming from the company itself), but this is clearly the future of disaster relief.

Drones are cheap, can be flown close to the ground, and are safer to use than helicopters. It's only a matter of time until the very first response by first responders is to toss a drone in the air to get a survey of the situation. After that, they just might toss a drone in the air to help deliver medicine and supplies.

Tuesday 19 August 2014

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-chinas-drone-led-search-for-earthquake-survivors-looks-like

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Search teams that rely on drones could run afoul of FAA

Texas EquuSearch relies mostly on horseback and all-terrain vehicles to search rough terrain. But it also employs 4-pound aerial drones to survey the ground with digital cameras.

Those drones were not used when the group surveyed an area of about four square miles near James Stephens’ residence Saturday, said Ray Ortiz, chief of detectives for the Vernon sheriff’s office. Nor was Stephens was found.

If the Texas group had used the drones, it could have run afoul of the federal government.

Using the drones in their search for Stephens would have violated a Federal Aviation Administration order not to fly the unmanned aircraft.

Texas EquuSearch has used drones since 2005 to locate 11 bodies, including those of a Houston man floating in Buffalo Bayou and a 2-year-old boy in Liberty County, said Tim Miller, its founder. In all, the group — which provides its services to families free of charge — has been involved in more than 1,350 searches in 42 states and eight foreign countries. Its help in the search for Stephens came at the request of his family.

“The bottom line is they won’t let us fly, and that drone has been so very valuable on so many searches,” Miller said. “When someone disappears, time is of the essence and it saves us a lot of time. And it’s very inexpensive.”

Brendan Schulman, a New York attorney representing Texas EquuSearch, said the FAA ordered the volunteer group to halt its use of drones Feb. 21. Schulman has asked the FAA to reverse the ban and let the Houston area group operate legally by April 16. If not, it plans a federal court challenge.

EquuSearch has avoided using drones since the FAA asked it to stop, Schulman said, but an emergency would force a difficult decision. “We hope the FAA will do the right thing in the next few days so we aren’t continuing to wait on a determination of legality.”

In Washington, an FAA spokesman would not speculate on what action might follow if EquuSearch flies its drones. “We hope they abide by our request to stop unauthorized operations.”

The agency noted that it has given emergency approval to use drones for relief work in natural disasters and search-and-rescue operations, but said a group such as Texas EquuSearch must be sponsored by a governmental agency that already has FAA permission to fly a drone. “We are not aware that any government entity with an existing certificate of authority has applied for an emergency naming Texas EquuSearch as its contractor,” the FAA said, adding that the process could take as little as a few hours.

Schulman and Miller said the FAA process of operating under another agency’s certificate is difficult and time-consuming. “I don’t care if it’s a couple of hours,” said Miller. “If we have a missing child or even an adult out there, a couple of hours is a matter of life or death.”

EquuSearch is being supported by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who has sponsored federal legislation that would govern the use of drones by law enforcement and others to protect privacy rights. “The big issue is the FAA should not be in the business of deciding who can get a drone and who can use a drone. They are making the decisions based on their own opinions.”

The FAA’s long delay in developing rules for drone operation has frustrated many users, who note the technology is evolving much faster than the government can set out rules for their use.

“Texas EquuSearch represents one of the many beneficial uses” of drones in search-and-rescue operations, said Melanie Hinton, communications director with the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. “This latest development further underscores the need for the FAA to immediately begin its long-delayed rule making to establish a regulatory framework for (drone) technology.”

The drones proved invaluable in EquuSearch’s effort to locate the body of Devon Davis, a 2-year-old who went missing from his home in rural Liberty County in April 2012.

“We had hundreds of searchers out there for about five days, including the FBI, the Texas Rangers, Houston Police Department and all the volunteer fire departments in Liberty County,” Liberty sheriff’s Capt. Ken DeFoor said. “We were about 30 minutes away from closing down the search on the fifth day when we launched a drone.” Fifteen minutes later, DeFoor said, the drone spotted a red dot in the weed-choked waters. Searchers recovered the body of the boy, who was wearing a red shirt when he wandered from home.

“I cannot understand the controversy going on about the use of drone aircraft for searching for lost children, dementia victims and the victims of foul play when the FAA has no problem with people flying drones for sport,” DeFoor said. “To me, it’s illogical and it makes no sense.”

Sunday 13 April 2014

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20140413/NEWS01/304130035/Search-teams-rely-drones-could-run-afoul-FAA?nclick_check=1

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Drone to take part in Uttarakhand search operation

As the fate of several hundreds of people remains unknown in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) on Saturday decided to deploy drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to locate missing persons.

Senthil Kumar of the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Chennai, and his team of research scholars reached Guptkashi to launch ‘Daksha,’ the indigenously developed drone, to trace persons probably trapped in inaccessible terrain.

Fitted with thermal and high definition cameras, the drone was on a trial sortie for a few hours. Fresh rains slowed down the process during the early hours, Dr. Senthil Kumar told The Hindu over the phone.

On seeing reports in the media that many persons were still missing in Uttarakhand and that rescue workers were unable to access certain pockets, Dr. Kumar met Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police K. Ramanujam and offered to launch drones in the search operation. In coordination with the NDRF officials, the Tamil Nadu Police and Anna University facilitated the team to visit the flood-affected areas.

“In the event of any person being alive in the debris or a pile of bodies, the thermal camera can sense temperature variation and track his/her location. High quality visuals of inaccessible terrain will be captured by the HD camera,” he said.

Rain hampers operation

Though the NDRF officials were planning to take the team to Kedarnath and its adjoining towns, inclement weather conditions prevented helicopter movement during the day. When reports last came in, the team was heading towards a valley some 100 km away from Guptkashi in Army trucks.

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tn-drone-to-take-part-in-uttarakhand-search-operation/article4889299.ece

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Disaster drones: How robot teams can help in a crisis

An ominous plume of black smoke hangs over east London. The scarcely believable news arrives in snippets: A huge blast has rocked the Thames Barrier; a surge of water is ploughing through the city; a sports stadium has collapsed; more explosions are reported on Twitter.

 Thousands of people are trying to evacuate, but like the banks of the Thames, the mobile networks are overwhelmed. It is time to send in the drones.

 Professor Nick Jennings prefers to call them unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). He is one of the chief scientific advisers to the government, and drew up this fictional scenario as part of his multi-million pound Orchid research project. 

Prof Jennings believes the key to mastering the pandemonium that follows large-scale disasters lies in intelligent, co-ordinated action between man and machine.

 Prof Nick Jennings heads the Agents, Interaction and Complexity Group at Southampton University The system he is testing will be ready next year, and will allow teams of drones to help emergency services from the air with minimal human supervision.

It is yet another non-military spin-off in the burgeoning field of drone technology. After studying real disasters like the Haiti earthquake of 2010, Prof Jennings realised that the key to successful disaster response - amidst all the chaos - is the intelligent allocation of tasks and resources, and humans on the ground are not always best placed to make those life and death decisions. "Humans can do things like fill in maps based on what they see, starting from a blank map, which is exactly what happened in Haiti. What buildings are damaged, where facilities are, that kind of basic crowd-sourcing already happens," says Prof Jennings. Aerial view of Haiti after the earthquake: Relief agencies currently fill out physical maps "But we want to augment that with autonomous flying vehicles that are able to get a view of the bigger picture on the ground, to improve situational awareness.

They can figure out where the disaster responders should go, where the resources should go." In his proposed system, UAVs will be launched immediately to monitor the unfolding disaster from the air. They will provide real-time footage to disaster responders on the ground, who can request specific information from the drones using hand-held electronic devices. They might ask, for example, 'how stable is this building's roof?' before entering to look for victims. "We could also have robots on the ground, that would go into areas too dangerous for humans," says Prof Jennings.

Handheld devices similar to this model (showing three screenshots) allow first responders to allocate tasks to drones, view live overhead video feeds from them, and mark tasks as completed, all on one shared platform.

His team is looking at ways that information from members of the public sent by smartphones could be integrated into this system. 


Research into non-military applications for drone technology is a booming area, with companies vying to find commercial applications. 


From their origins as expensive pieces of military hardware, the price of drones themselves has fallen dramatically, to the point where they are even within the budget of the hobbyist. 


Private individuals are adapting these drones, which are capable of programmable flight paths, for their own uses, including everything from wildlife surveillance to farm management. 

BAE Systems recently unveiled its research into technology that could allow pilot-less planes to fly in UK airspace, potentially for operations like border control and search and rescue. 


But what makes Prof Jennings's research stand out is that he is interested in allowing drones to fly as squadrons, improvising their own flight paths as a unit in response to new information, without human intervention. 

The teams of drones that will patrol a disaster have already been tested extensively in Sydney, Australia. 


Algorithms dictate the co-ordinated movement of the drones as they respond to requests from humans. Tests take place in Australia rather than the UK because of airspace restrictions. 

The drones he uses are in fact Mikrocopter Hexacopters, which have six rotary blades and are just under a metre in width. "The underlying research is based on aspects of artificial intelligence, getting software to do clever things, and underpinning that is a form of mathematics", explains Prof Jennings.

During tests, the drones are flown as a unit and allocated multiple tasks from the ground. What is in fact being tested on site is the mathematical algorithms that control the drones' joint movement.


If successful, these algorithms will direct the drones so that they are in the optimal position to collect information requests from humans and distribute them back to the ground. 

A poster in Prof Jennings' lab explains how a team of drones interacts with ground crew 'Decentralised coordination algorithms' are intelligent enough to deal with out of sync data requests, lost data, and can even predict where future requests will come from.

They allow the drones to communicate between each other and work effectively as a team.

The algorithms themselves have already been tested on computer software, like RoboCup Rescue Simulator, that simulates human catastrophes with mock ups of people fleeing towns and cities. "The next stage," says Prof Jennings, "is to run some mock disasters in open spaces, and have individual human actors in there, interacting with the robots, doing it for real." This is scheduled to take place in October. 

A fully operational system is said to be 18 months away. Several police forces are already interested, Pof Jennings says, and he hopes both governments and NGOs will take up the technology.

So if in the future you are unfortunate enough to find yourself caught up in a terrorist attack or natural disaster and see a robot hovering above your head, take heart - help may be closer than you think.

 Monday 23 July 2012

 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18581883

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