THE Donegal Mountain Rescue Team (DMRT) has played a major role in the development of a new app that is set to ‘revolutionise’ search and rescue operations.
The application has been developed by DroneSAR, a Letterkenny-based company, in association with DJJ, the leader manufacturer of drones.
The high-tech software was developed based on research carried out by DJJ in conjuction with two organisations – one of which was the Donegal Mountain Rescue Team.
The tests were conducted over a six-month period from last last year by DMRT.
One scenario reconstructed by the team was a search for a man who had gone fishing in a mountain lake and failed to return home the next morning.
Without the drone, a five-person rescue operation took two hours to comlete; with the drone, it took only 40 minutes.
DroneSAR can stream live images and video from a regular or thermal imaging camera to a command centre as well as rescue teams on the ground.
The software can tag the GPS co-ordinates of a victim and automatically transmit them by email or SMS, enabling ground crews to reach victims more quickly.
The app takes into account various types of terrain, allowing the drone to fly patterns to survey an area faster.
Flight paths can be adjusted for any terrain including hills, mountains, trees, or flat land.
Completed search patterns are also recorded and logged for easy handover to oncoming rescue crews.
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