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ST. DENIS, Saskatchewan — Drones are more often recognized for striking rather than saving, but one drone helped track and rescue an injured man when he disappeared after getting in a car accident in Canada.
Just after midnight June 5, the Saskatoon Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) received an emergency call regarding a single vehicle rollover. Fire rescue and emergency crews were dispatched to the scene, but after searching the immediate surrounding area, they couldn't locate the vehicle's driver, according to the RCMP website.
An air ambulance with night vision was then recruited to see if it could find the driver, but it was unsuccessful as well. After an hour on scene, RCMP members contacted Doug Green, a forensic collision reconstructionist, and requested the help of the Draganflyer X4-ES, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
Meanwhile, the 25-year-old driver was cold and wearing nothing but a t-shirt and pants in near-freezing temperatures. At about 2:10 a.m., the driver called 911 from his cell phone but didn't know where he was or how to help crews find him.
The Draganflyer's infrared camera located the driver after recognizing three heat signatures on the ground, one of which was his. He was at the base of a tree next to a snow bank, and searchers said they would not have been able to find him until daylight without the help of the police drone.
To our knowledge, this is the first time that a life may have been saved with the use of a (small unmanned aerial system) helicopter.
–Zenon Dragon, president and founder of Dragonfly Innovations, Inc.
"To our knowledge, this is the first time that a life may have been saved with the use of a (small unmanned aerial system) helicopter," Zenon Dragan, president and founder of Draganfly Innovations, Inc., said in a news release.
RCMP released footage of the search and rescue effort, starting with the GPS coordinate gathered from the cell phone ping after the 911 call. The infrared camera then followed crews as they located the missing driver.
Rescue-style drones aren't a new concept: RTS Lab in Iran developed Pars, a UAV that could potentially rescue people drowning near coastlines.
UAVs have also been a topic of speculation in terms of delivering medicine and supplies to people. The humanitarian group Ideate came up with an idea to use drones to deliver goods to devastated environments. The drone would gather its data from cell phones used to send an emergency message. GPS coordinates would be gathered by the drone, at which point medicine could be delivered nearby, according to Gizmodo.
