Tech for good: how drone technology is changing emergency rescue missions

Drones are being adapted to search for life in burning buildings - here's how it's done 
Amelia Heathman10 May 2018

Drones are a controversial tech gadget to say the least.

They can pose a risk to aircraft, cause potential privacy issues, and are being used to smuggle contraband into prisons.

Despite their bad reputation, a lot of research is being put into the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) within emergency missions.

At New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Antonios Tzes, has been manning a project across five different universities in the US, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Greece, to develop drones for use inside buildings, particularly in fire situations.

After designing ground vehicles for rescue operations, Tzes and his team were looking for a way to move away from the ground.

“We needed to go up into the air, in confined spaces, and drones were the logical way to do it,” he tells the Standard.

Here’s what you need to know about how drones can be used in rescue missions.

Drones and rescue missions: a 10-year+ project

Tzes and his team at NYU Abu Dhabi began researching this project around 10 years ago. At the start, they were using drones to inspect tractors in fields, looking at wear and tear of the vehicles.

“After we resolved this we thought, why don’t we go inside buildings?” explains Tzes. “At first it was simple experimentation, such as can the drone position itself inside a building.

“When we solved this, we decided to do something useful for human beings. And that was search and rescue.”

Professor Antonios Tzes of NYU Abu Dhabi

The team aren’t building new drones – instead, they are adapting and developing them to be used in search and rescue missions. Everything they build is open-source so the technology they’re creating will live on even after they stop working on it.

The drones they’ve adapted can go into the building first to scan the surroundings, before relaying the information back to the emergency services who can then go into the building and find the people.

But how does this work?

Adapting drones for indoor emergency use

Adapting drones to be used indoors is pretty complicated. For starters, there is no GPS inside a building, so they need to be fitted with lasers to measure distance.

The drones have microphones fitted in order to listen for voices.

As well, in a building full of smoke, it can be difficult to detect the source of the fire or find any people who may still be inside it. That’s why Tzes’s team has developed sensors for the drones, such as chemical sensors to look for vital signals, or no vital signals, including sensors to detect methane gas.

“The drones can detect methane from decomposing human bodies,” explains Tzes. “Then the firemen can decide which parts of the building to go into.”

It’s not just burning buildings that the drones can be used for. Depending on the scenario, different sensors can be fitted to the drones for that purpose, such as a nuclear accident. Then, the vehicle can be fitted with nuclear detectors to find the source of the accident.

Tzes's team aren't building their own drones, instead they are adapting ready-made drones - adding sensors and other technology

The important thing is that the drones work together in whatever scenario. Tzes describes it as sending a “swarm” of drones into a building in a search mission.

“Every drone communicates its status to the neighbouring ones. If I’m the leader, I can inform another drone that I didn’t find anything suspicious in that segment of the building so go search somewhere else.”

This is particularly crucial when it comes to delivering medical supplies. Depending on how large the drone is, it can carry weights from 2.5kg up to 8kg. Tzes hopes that these drones will be used to carry oxygen tanks into burning buildings, for people inside them.

“For instance, the leader drone could see someone needs oxygen. It can tell the follower drone with the medical supplies to go to this part of the building and provide the oxygen tank”, says Tzes.

Emergency drones: increased autonomy but not fully autonomous

Once the swarm of drones has been set off, they have a high level of autonomy so they can navigate around the building without a human commanding them.

But, these drones are not fully autonomous. There still needs to be a human in the loop making decisions.

“If you have a burning building and there is a fire on the 10th floor, do you only search that floor? Who decides to go or not to go to the 11th floor – the drone or the human?” says Tzes.

“These are issues that need to be properly addressed and we think that, with emergency services, the human should always give the abstract commands.”

This element is important for the plans Tzes and the group have for the drones in the future.

Part of the working group is looking at designing low weight manipulators to attach to the drones. This is so the manipulators could be used to perform minor surgeries.

“For example, the drone could carry the manipulators, land, and the manipulator performs the surgery with a surgeon operating it during a teleoperation,” explains Tzes.

This is still relatively futuristic. Tzes says he wouldn’t be able to give an exact date of when this could be ready.

But the idea is that it would bring a surgical robot close to a person in need so a doctor could provide basic surgical operations.

“Not heart surgery though,” he says.

At the moment, the group is in confidential discussions with agencies over the use of the drones. They could be put to work in real-life emergency situations in under two years.

“At the beginning, it was fun, then curiosity, and then let’s do something useful for all of us,” says Tzes. “I have good collaborators and people to work with and all of us enjoy working on this technology so much.”

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