An Irish start-up company that has developed award-winning life-saving search and rescue technology for drones, has joined forces with a leading business in Europe’s space exploitation industry.
Irish based DroneSAR has formed a partnership with Astrosat to incorporate their drone software with Astrosat’s own Recovery and Protection in Disaster (RAPID) system.
The RAPID system is designed to provide intelligent situational awareness and support in the context of disaster scenarios to aid, inform and support decisions that are made in the operational theatre.
DroneSAR was developed through Donegal Mountain Rescue who were chosen as one of four European pilot tests sites by DJI, the market leader in consumer drone technology, and EENA the European Emergency Numbers Association. The software was refined based on the results of this project.
DroneSAR provides software that enables commercially available drones to maintain autonomous search patterns based on waypoint missions or user-defined search ‘boxes’, reducing risk to search personnel, improving situational awareness and increasing the chance of finding people in distress, all at a fraction of the cost of a SAR helicopter.
It has a Share Location function, which allows pilots to instantly share locations to all team members as the drone flies.
DroneSAR recently won the Copernicus Master Service Challenge European Space Week in Tallin, Estonia.
Last summer, DroneSAR teamed up with Clare County Council to trial their drone technology for use for automated beach patrols for the first time in Ireland.
Irish Aer Corps pilot and DroneSAR CEO Oisin McGrath said: “The software, a result of 18 months of development with input from Search and Rescue (SAR) teams across the country, perfectly with the RAPID system.
“It allows first responders a greater depth of overview, through the addition of drone footage to the interface. We plan to integrate both platforms to give near-real-time satellite imagery to both unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots and to Command & Control for better informed decision making”.
Astrosat CEO Steve Lee said: “DroneSAR’s technology will fit beautifully with our RAPID system. With RAPID’s ability to provide up-to-date mapping images in less than three hours, and the ability to interlace footage from drones, we are giving first responders the most detailed picture available.”