Unmanned aerial system–assisted wilderness search and rescue mission

The success of the wilderness search and rescue missions is highly dependent on the time required to search for the lost person. The use of unmanned aerial systems may enhance search and rescue missions by supplying aerial support of the search process. There are unmanned aerial system–based solutions, which are capable of detecting the lost person using computer vision, infrared sensors, and detection of a mobile phone signal. The most pressing issue is reducing the cost of a search and rescue mission. Thus, to improve the efficiency of the resource utilization in wilderness search scenario, we consider the use of unmanned aerial system for both mobile phone detection and enabling Wi-Fi communication for the ground portion of the search and rescue team. Such an approach does not require specific additional tools (e.g. access point, specific user equipment) for communication, which reduces the cost and improves the scalability and coordination of the search and rescue mission. As a result, the article provides methods of searching the wilderness for a person using beacon signals from a mobile phone for two situations: when the distance to the source of emergency signals is unknown and when the distance is known. In addition, the voice transmission delay and the number of unmanned aircrafts are found to guaranty the quality of a call. © The Author(s) 2019.