Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for First Responders: Technology, Buying Guide and Operating Concept | Market Info Group – Premium Market & Technology ForecastsMarket Info Group
This guide looks great but at around $1,000, I’m just not ready for it. Maybe they’ll send me a copy to review.
“First Responders need information and they need it fast. Whether they’re police officers rushing to a crime scene, fire fighters faced with a wall of smoke or medics sorting out a mass casualty event, they never know enough about what’s ahead. As a result, First Responders employ some of the most sophisticated technology found outside the military. UAVs are following the proven pattern of military technology migrating to civil agencies; some are already flying for First Responders. But very little military technology is suitable for direct transfer – buying military systems is almost always a big mistake.
This new report overviews unmanned aircraft technology, especially the UAVs that will prove most useful for First Responders. It also details the political, bureaucratic and privacy ‘back stories’ that form the public’s context in the most demanding European and North American nations.
More importantly, this report includes two unique features that First Responders and their suppliers won’t find anywhere else:
- A detailed Buying Guide (with checklists) designed to walk First Responders through early planning for an unmanned aviation unit. It proves that simply operating ex-military unmanned aircraft will almost always fail.
- An illustrated Operating Concept created for a real, diverse and geographically varied jurisdiction. It forms the basis for critical acquisition decisions and the new unit’s success.
Together, these features will bring the reader to a level of understanding that will allow them to intelligently advise sworn leaders and community policy makers through a rational (not emotional) process of evaluating UAV capabilities relative to their needs and resources. This is not hype or a sales pitch – this is a detailed education with extractable guides and illustrations.
multicopter passenger car/helo
Advanced Tactics, a small aerospace company, released details about its AT Transformer vehicle technology and announced that a full-scale technology demonstrator has completed its first driving tests.
The AT Black Knight Transformer
The
AT Transformer technology makes possible the world’s first roadable,
vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. The patented AT
Transformer technology combines the capabilities of a helicopter, such
as the ability to take off and land anywhere, with the capabilities of
an off-road automobile. The first technology demonstrator, the AT Black
Knight Transformer, completed driving tests in December 2013 in Southern
California and is scheduled to fly in early 2014.
Update on WWF effort
Google is quietly funding an arsenal of high-tech law enforcement
equipment, but it’s not for the law enforcement you know. It’s designed
to protect African animals from illegal poachers.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued an update this week on their Wildlife Crime Technology Project, which received a $5 million Google Global Impact award at the end of 2012. Earlier this week, the WWF issued a report on how the money was used–and, in the process, gave a peak into a normally secretive world of drones and high-tech sensors.
Drones for Good IDEO tumblr
http://drones-for-good.tumblr.com/
Great variety of posts here
Drones for emergency response
“I visited the University of Torino in 2007 to speak with the team developing UAVs for the World Food Program.
Since then, I’ve bought and tested two small UAVs of my own so I can
use this new technology to capture aerial imagery during disasters; like
the footage below from the Philippines.
UAVs, or drones, have a very strong
military connotation for many of us. But so did space satellites before
Google Earth brought satellite imagery into our homes and changed our
perceptions of said technology. So it stands to reason that UAVs and
aerial imagery will follow suit. This explains why I’m a proponent of
the Drone Social Innovation Award, which
seeks to promote the use of civilian drone technology for the benefit
of humanity. I’m on the panel of judges for this award, which is why I
reached out to DanOffice IT, a Swiss-based company that deployed two drones in response to Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. The drones in question are Huginn X1′s, which have a flight time of 25 minutes with a range of 2 kilometers and maximum altitude of 150 meters.
“I recently spoke with one of the
Huginn pilots who was in Tacloban. He flew the drone to survey shelter
damage, identify blocked roads and search for bodies in the debris
(using thermal imaging cameras mounted on the drone for the latter). The
imagery captured also helped to identify appropriate locations to set
up camp. When I asked the pilot whether he was surprised by anything
during the operation, he noted that road-clearance support was not a
use-case he had expected. I’ll be meeting with him in Switzerland in the
next few weeks to test-fly a Huginn and explore possible partnerships.
“I’d like to see closer collaboration between the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN) and groups like DanOffice, for example. Providing DHN-member Humanitarian OpenStreetMap (HOTosm) with up-to-date aerial imagery during disasters would be a major win. This was the concept behind OpenAerialMap, which was first discussed back in 2007. While the initiative has yet to formally launch, PIX4D is
a platform that “converts thousands of aerial images, taken by
lightweight UAV or aircraft into geo-referenced 2D mosaics and 3D
surface models and point clouds.”
Drones for search and rescue – Texas Drone User Group Exercise
UAVs (or drones) are starting to be used for search & rescue operations, such as in the Philippines following
Typhoon Yolanda a few months ago. They are also used to find missing
people in the US, which may explain why members of the North Texas Drone
User Group (NTDUG) are organizing the (first ever?) Search & Rescue challenge
in a few days. The purpose of this challenge is to 1) encourage members
to build better drones and 2) simulate a real world positive
application of civilian drones.
Nine teams have signed up to compete in
Saturday’s challenge, which will be held in a wheat field near
Renaissance Fair in Waxahachie, Texas (satellite image below). The
organizers have already sent these teams a simulated missing person’s
report. This will include a mock photo, age, height, hair color,
ethnicity, clothing and where/when this simulated lost person was last
seen. Each drone must have a return to home function and failsafe as
well as live video streaming.
Airware Completes Anti-Poaching UAV Field Tests in Africa | Unmanned Systems Technology
Share webpage:Airware Completes Anti-Poaching UAV Field Tests in Africa | Unmanned Systems Technology http://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/2014/01/airware-completes-anti-poaching-uav-field-tests-in-africa/
Aerial drones to help protect endangered species of rhino
Endangered White Rhinos such as these could soon be getting some protection from an aerial drone (Photo: Shutterstock)
Aerial drones, whether they be dropping bombs, books or burritos,
have attracted a certain degree of controversy in recent times. While
the potential of the technology is plain to see, many aren’t convinced
that the benefits will outweigh the risks associated with unmanned
vehicles zipping about in the sky above. With its recent field testing
of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to protect an ailing rhino
population, Airware are determined to help the industry shed some of
these negative connotations.
Airware is a California-based company that specializes in the
development of autopilots for unmanned aircraft systems. It recently
teamed up with the Oj Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya to test a drone
equipped with Airware’s autopilot platform and control software that
will allow it to act as both a deterrent and surveillance tool. The
system uses fixed and gimbal-mounted cameras to deliver real-time
digital video and thermal images to rangers on the ground, enabling them
to deploy a security team in the event of an incident.