Aerial Reconnaissance¶

Route-finding and route-planning is a significant aspect of ground based search operations. To access a search area, teams sometimes have to travel significant distances through dense or challenging terrain. This can impose a high time-cost on the SAR effort. As well as being difficult and time consuming, the access routes can exposed teams to unexpected hazards (e.g. wild dog packs). Aerial reconnaissance with a UAV could assist the SES team reach the search area faster and more safely.

Scenario: A search team has been tasked with searching an area 8km from the nearest road. Examination of the topographic maps suggest a number of possible routes, but on the information available there is no clear best route. If they chose a good route team might arrive at the search area in as little as 90 minutes, but if they are hampered by terrain or forced to backtrack they might take 3 hours to reach the search area.

It would be of benefit in this situation to have a small UAV reconnoitre candidate routes, and (through image post-processing) augment their existing maps with high resolution orthophotos. For example, if a small fixed wing UAV was deployed at the same time the search party, within 30 minutes it could have travelled 50 km and photographically surveyed all candidate routes. A coordinator at the UAV ground-station (or headquarters if the ground-station has 3G reception) could relay intelligence to the ground team over radio, describing vegetation along various routes and comparing it with vegetation that the team has already passed through, alerting them to hazards or issues, etcetera.

Mission Profiles ideas

AP / Vegitation mapping
OBC mission