The use of a drone to find two lost tourists in Australian bushland yesterday may perhaps be the clearest indication yet of just how useful the unmanned aerial vehicles might be in future search and rescue missions.
A 32-year-old German man and a woman, 24, from Hong became disorientated while bushwalking in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in New South Wales. They were able to phone emergency services to raise the alarm but language difficulties and patchy mobile phone coverage made it difficult for paramedics and police to pinpoint their exact location.
It was after dark when the water police launched their Eagle 3 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) — a Phantom 3 Pro drone — over the area. The tourists were able to spot the drone’s flashing lights and shone their mobile phone torch at it, allowing police and paramedics to locate them and walk them to safety.
The pair was assessed by paramedics and treated for mild dehydration and a few scratches.
It is believed to be the first time Broken Bay water police have used a drone for a search but they regularly use it along the water’s edge at the foot of hard-to-access headlands to check if rock fishermen are wearing life jackets.
“We’ve had it six months but we don’t use it daily — it’s not a toy,” Broken Bay water police commander, Senior Sergeant Chris Morgan, told the Manly Daily newspaper. “It’s sometimes much more efficient to use a UAV than to deploy a police vessel.”
As technology advances and drone range increases, there is hope in some quarters that drones could prove lifesavers in searches for lost or stranded travellers in more remote areas, although there are still tight regulations about how they can be used.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) robotics professor Jonathan Roberts has previously said that search and rescue is a logical application for drones.
“The technology does exist for a drone to go out, fly a search area, fill in the search area with pictures on the ground, and even do automatic detection to look for people,” he said. “It’s relatively easy to operate them in areas that are uncluttered.”
And WA Police indicated last year that they were looking at drone technology closely.
“We certainly have an appetite for them,” Goldfields police superintendent Darryl Gaunt said. “They offer us a quality product, it’s highly portable and it’s also far more cost efficient than aircraft.”
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