UAVs will find people lost in the forest quickly and without GPS

Drones can be very effectivesearch and rescue tool, but not in dense forests, where the tree cover can block GPS signals. Fortunately, MIT has developed a smart solution: use the same technology that drives autonomous cars. Scientists have developed drones that use LIDAR to map forests without using GPS. Each drone creates a two-dimensional map, which includes the position of the trees, which greatly simplifies remembering the places that the robot has already visited during the search.

This, in turn, will also allow combining cards from the entire fleet of drones and combing large areas of the forest with minimal effort.

UAVs in search of lost

Such drones will also be more effective.and how exactly they are looking. Instead of sending drones to explore uncharted areas, the MIT method conserves the drone's momentum as much as possible. Usually this leads to the creation of a spiral pattern that covers the area much faster - this is very important for a rescue mission, when every minute counts.

However, there are limitations. The current system lacks an external ground station to combine maps, and an object recognition system will be required to identify people. MIT assumes that future versions will use the cards together, making contact, and object recognition will be fully realized. If everything falls into place, the benefits will be obvious. Rescue teams will be able to find and pull out much more wounded and lost tourists in the forest, relying on a fleet of drones than on large groups of people, and will do it much faster.

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