Drowning is one of the most common causes of injury-related death worldwide.
Drones (UAVs) can reach the scene of an emergency more quickly than conventional rescue equipment such as helicopters, boats or lifeguards, making them a valuable part of the rescue chain in the future.
The aim is to place drones in technically advanced drone garages near inland waterways, connect them to a rescue centre and equip them with adequate sensor technology. To this end, alarm and AI elements are being developed that contribute to object recognition and swimmer tracking, as well as to optimising the drones' flight routes and thus shortening the rescue time. In addition, missions are simulated in a virtual environment in order to analyse and automatically optimise the position of the drone garage and flight trajectories of the drone to the deployment locations for different scenarios. Various simulation and search strategies as well as mixed-integer programming are used. The project is being driven forward across federal states in close cooperation with the integrated regional control centres in Lusatia and Eastern Saxony and the Cottbus and Hoyerswerda fire brigades. The Geierswalder and Partwitz lakes in the Lusatian Lakeland are the prototypical operational area.

Further information and news about RescueFly can be found on the project website https://rescuefly.org

Partner:

• Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS), Potsdam
• Dresden University of Technology, Dresden
• Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz
• THOLEG Civil Protection Systems, Welzow
• Droniq GmbH, Frankfurt am Main

Funding:

Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport Affairs (BMDV)

Duration:

01/2022 - 12/2023