From Robots.net:
Amin Rigi of the RTS Lab in Tehran, Iran let us know about a new rescue robotthey're working on. The robot is named Pars. it's a ship-based quadcopter that responds instantly when alerted to potential drowning victims in the ocean, locating them with FLIR, and dispensing life preservers directly over them. The current prototype carries one life preserver and they are working on a new model to carry three life preserver rings. Future models may dispense up to 15 self-inflating rings. A launching platform for use on ships has been designed but more intriguing is an idea for a stand-alone launching platform. From the website:
A sea platform has also been designed for the robot. This platform used satellite data for its control and it uses solar energy for its energy. It is always in the water and the robots are ready for action. When a marine incident occurs it quickly operates and sends the robots to the event to help.In both cases, the launching platform also serves as a recharging station, keeping the robots in a continual ready state. This looks like a great project and we look forward to seeing future progress reports on the Pars robots. Read on to see some renderings of the robots in action as well as the designs for the launching platforms.
A solar powered launching platform for the Pars rescue robots
Pars rescue robots taking off from a ship-based launching platform
Pars rescue robot dropping a life preserver
Comments
Cool concept. I think for bad weather, like Hans said, you need collective pitch and I think symmetrical blades.
Rotor needs to be collective pitch. I don't see fixed pitch doing so well in any type of weather
Damn Iran! They stole my idea! I was just talking to a co-worker of mine several weeks ago about the Navy or Ocean liners using quads equipped with FLIR to lcoate man-overboard victims at night. The big thing is the Navy...when they have a man overboard, say on an aircraft carrier, they don't turn around. It'd be nice to have the Corpmen trained with a Sea Rescue UAS to locate victims and drop an infatable life raft equipped with GPS, emergency response beacon, and VHF radio so a rescue vessel within the fleet could scoop the individual out of the water and the victim could communicate with response units. The ocean at night is a desolate place with no illumination. Even with a full moon it's impossible to spot someone in the water from the flight deck. Especially with the caps of the waves.
BTW the quad Roberto is showing is also waterproof and can eventually land on water... something you really need to consider when deploying stuff in a marine environment...
Emile
As a lifesaving device for beaches it could work really well, set up near lifeguard stations and deployed when required but locating the right person in a crowded beach could be problematic
I agree with LanMark that open ocean or boat based would have limited use due to conditions and area size
Interesting concept.. not sure I agree with the its always nice out sort of planning. I have seen some really rough waters and storms that this does not seem to really account for. This seems designed to always decent weather outside.
But the overall concept is pretty interesting.. not sure how the quad would know exactly where to go, even with FLIR it would still need a pretty close quadrant within the quad's flight time divided by 2... I guess the boat based approach would be close enough to dial in the location for the quad to go to.. but then again this seems like overkill to just throwing overboard the life preservers... since you have to be pretty close to the action.. or a boat launching system.
So what 'problem' are they really trying to solve here? people in need of help in swimming zones near beaches? or out to sea which the very large boat seems to indicate... how many people end up in the water needing a floating ring that wouldn't be supplied by the boat in which they fell off of. Do you realize how large the ocean is? Heck years ago, that executive from Microsoft or wherever that was lost out at sea was never found.. and they searched huge areas of the ocean.. the boat and/or debris just disappeared.
So I guess this would be used near land in swimming areas? Large boat needing deep water is just eye candy? Seems like with typical flight times of quad copters the absolute max radius you could cover would be in the 4 mile range... assuming the floating rings don't drop your flight times down.. which they obviously do.
Not everything is made better by the use of UAVs.