Monday, February 15, 2016

Search and Rescue Drones

Scientists Training Search And Rescue Drones To Help Lost Hikers Get Home

A team of researchers led by Prof. Davide Scaramuzza have developed a way to train drones to follow forest trails in order to assist search and rescue missions for lost hikers. According to the research, Prof. Scaramuzza's team figured out a method of machine learning through Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) which enables an unsupervised drone to determine the direction of a path using an on-board camera.

The system was created by first setting up a hiker with three cameras that cover about 180 degrees of visual information: one positioned straight ahead, one placed 30 degrees to the left and the other 30 degrees to the right so that there is a slight overlap in the captured video.

The raw data used was eight hours' worth of footage of approximately 7 kilometers of hiking trail between an altitude of 300 and 1,200 meters. The footages were taken at different times of the day and under different weather conditions.

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