[SaraHap] SARA Happenings September 2009

[Chris Hoare]

Hi All: 

SARA Happenings is issued to foster communication within the Search and Rescue community in Alberta. It is going to 226 e-mail addresses that are listed as the primary contact of SAR Alberta member groups or which were requested to be added to the mailing list.

Subscription and unsubscription information is at the end of the newsletter. 


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EDITOR'S WORD

Only one program oriented item this month - which first appeared in last month's newsletter.

I guess there's not much SAR traffic right now, but it would be a good time for groups to post their good news.

I did a short trawl of the Internet to come up with one item that may interest SAR members. It's after the only notice, below.


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OPERATION OCTOPUS

It's official - Operation Octopus will be underway October 24th and 25th, 2009. Mark your calendar and plan to come for what proves to be a great team building exercise - for your own local team as well as for the greater SAR Alberta team. There will be fun, adventure and even food so plan to attend so that we make this a great experience for all of us. We learn more from each other in action than we ever could from a book.

Talk to your team so that you can RSVP basic numbers by October 1st. Put together some items from your club to be put in for a draw, pack up your tent and be ready to roll! There will be camping available and some meals, but we want this to be as much like a real search as possible some come with that in mind and be ready and eager to meet new people and gain new ideas. Let's show Alberta what Search and Rescue is really about!

Any questions? Please feel free to contact Edward Van Heeren at president at rockysar.com or look at the Rocky SAR website and feel free to contact SAR Alberta. 


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UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES.

The article I include is the abstract of a US National Science Foundation Award to investigate using small UAVs in back country search and rescue operations. I see the investigation was supposed to end last year - does anyone know if it did or if it's still ongoing?

I became interested in the topic some years ago when I did front end work in the bush for geophysical exploration. While I could sometimes get a client to spring for helicopter scouting there were many times when I wished for a small ramp-launched eye-in-the sky to check out difficult terrain.

I visited a manufacturer of the early vehicles once in England. He built small UAVs of the dimensions mentioned in the abstract - mostly used to provide inconspicuous aerial observation for the police in Ireland. A thousand feet up they were silent and invisible for all practical purposes. The problem of remote piloting was an obstacle to me and I see the solution to that was part of this investigation. 


National Science Foundation Award #0534736 



UAV-Enabled Wilderness Search and Rescue: A Human-Centered Approach


Investigator(s): Michael Goodrich (PI) ; Timothy McLain (Co-PI) ; Bryan Morse (Co-PI)

Sponsor: Brigham Young University, UT 84602 8014226177

Start Date/Expiration Date 2005-11-01 to 2008-10-31 (amended 2005-11-08)

Awarded Amount to Date: $501,426

Abstract: Wilderness search and rescue (WSAR) is the task of finding and giving assistance to humans who are lost or injured in mountain, desert, lake, river, or other remote settings. Because of the vast distances involved in wilderness settings, searchers frequently depend on surveillance from helicopters and small airplanes. Although these resources are very useful for searchers, the have limitations: resources consume considerable cost, there can be delays between when the resources are needed and when they arrive, ground searchers and pilots must overcome communications barriers between them, and the aircraft may not be able to provide low level imagery because of flying restrictions associated with rugged terrain. The central hypothesis of this project is that mini (3-5 foot wing spans), fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be used by WSAR personnel to efficiently find people in the wilderness. The human factors issues associated with small UAVs are much different than those associated with large UAVs, mostly because small UAVs for WSAR personnel imply limitations on operator training, sensor capacity, autonomy capability, and flight time. The PI's plan is to develop operator interfaces and UAV autonomy for WSAR systems that allow people without RC-piloting skills to search an area, using either online or offline approaches. When working online, the PI will adopt a non-pilot operator perspective and design autonomy to allow operators working in an "augmented virtuality" environment to "guide the camera" rather than fly the UAV. In situations where information from a UAV's video is to be recorded and used in offline information retrieval and analysis, the PI will pursue an active mosaic approach in which video images are overlaid on terrain maps. The PI will employ a strongly human-centered approach in all phases of the project, both for creating the WSAR systems and for evaluating them, in which expertise from researchers in human-robot interaction, computer vision, controls, and artificial intelligence is integrated. User studies will include field tests with WSAR personnel, investigation of current work practice in WSAR teams, usefulness of active mosaicing for offline and online searches, and so on. Broader Impacts: Each year, many people are lost or find themselves in jeopardy while hiking, boating/kayaking, skiing, fishing, etc. Each year, wilderness search and rescue consumes thousands of person-hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in Utah alone. With each hour that passes between the time that a person is lost and WSAR people find the victim, the effective search radius grows by approximately 3km. Each hour spent in the water or lost in the woods decreases the likelihood of a successful rescue. A portable UAV with appropriate interfaces, autonomy, and sensor processing at an affordable price should decrease the amount of time required between when searchers arrive at a scene and the time when aerial surveillance is present to support their efforts. Such a system would increase the probability of successful rescue.

NSF Org: IIS - Division of Information & Intelligent Systems

Award Number: 0534736

Award Instrument: Standard Grant

Program Manager: Ephraim P. Glinert

IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems

CSE Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering

NSF Program(s): HUMAN COMPUTER INTER PROGRAM

Field Application(s): Human Subjects, Information Systems

Program Reference Code(s): BASIC RESEARCH & HUMAN RESORCS, 9218

COLLABORATIVE SYSTEMS, 7496

Program Element Code(s): 6845


Downloaded from - http://www.sciencestorm.com/award/0534736.html 


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SARA HAPPENINGS SUBMISSIONS 

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