Software to locate avalanche transceivers using drone

Abstract

Avalanches are dangerous events that can be lethal to victims caught by its devastating impacts. The survival chance of the victims decreases drastically with time, where after 10 minutes the chance for survival is slim. The rescue operation is therefore very time limited and the majority of the time is spent to locate the victims based on normal search methods. Using a drone-based system to assist the search could reduce the time required for the search process greatly. Thus, increases the survival chances for the victims. The thesis contains research on a solution that uses information gathered by a drone system fitted with both GPS device and avalanche transceiver to create a map over the area showing the potential locations of the victims. A solution was developed and tested in various scenarios, by simulating drone flights over an area with an avalanche transceiver. This will allow the rescue team to focus on a smaller area and save life critical time in locating individuals and dig them out. The results showed that the solution was capable of reducing the search area down to a few square meters a short period of time instead of requiring the entire avalanche area to be searched. The accuracy of the solution is restricted by the GPS accuracy and noise, which prevents the solution from narrowing down the search area further. The results show that the flight speed of the drone should be 5m/s or lower, otherwise it causes inaccuracy in the mapping results.