Drones for good

Here’s a cool story of drones being used for good! A developer is using aerial images taken with a drone, a DJI Mavic Pro (DJI, Amazon) in combination with artificial intelligence (AI) software to recognize SOS messages painted on the streets in Puerto Rico.

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During a drone demonstration by local fire and police departments in Ohio, a demo flight turned into a real search and rescue operation when a father asked Fire Chief Brian Miller and Police Cpl. Justin Alloway to help locate his nine-year-old daughter. It all happened during the Fourth Friday event last week in Westerville when thousands of people crowd the streets of the Ohio town. Hannah, the missing girl, had walked ahead of her family and the father couldn’t find her anymore. Luckily, the DJI M210 drone located the girl within minutes and reunited the family. Drones for good!

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The Department of Defense supports the use of drones on any CalFire operation until the end of the year. Previously, state officials would have to seek permission for every drone mission they wanted to perform. The permission to use drones to map California wildfires until the end of the year comes as a breakthrough. Especially now that drones have become standard equipment for fire departments to keep firefighters safe and to assist in search and rescue missions.

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We have reported on many stories in which drones were used to find missing people, however, this one is a first. In Florida, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office deployed Six (!) drones to help find a missing 77-year-old man. The man, who reportedly suffers from health and mental challenges, was lost for two hours when the Sheriff’s Office was contacted. The CCSO deployed their Drone Operations Unit, who divided the search area in a grid and deployed six drones in search of the missing man. The CCSO obviously knew what they were doing and the man was found and brought back to safety.

What stands out in this story is not just the fact that drones were used on the search, but that the CCSO has a dedicated Drone Operations Unit that methodically executed the search and use multiple drones to find the missing person faster. I hope this story gets picked up by many police and fire departments around the country (world) as it is a great example of how drones can be successfully used. You can read the report from the CCSO below.

According to DJI, this is (at least) the 228th person around the world who has been rescued with the help of a drone. Drones for good.

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In a second story about drones for good, an injured hiker was rescued with the help of a drone. The woman had fallen nearly 30-feet, down a rocky slope in Clear Creek Canyon in Denver, Colorado. A drone was used to locate the woman, but it took three dozen rescue workers nearly six hours, an inflatable raft and two rope systems to bring the hiker back to safety from the inaccessible backcountry. Based on the photos in a tweet from West Metro Fire Rescue, it seems that another DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise has been used in this rescue.

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Xenia police of Greene County, Ohio released a drone video of the moment that a 90-year-old woman, who suffers from dementia was rescued. Her daughter, Beverly Brown, credits the drone for helping find her mother and bringing her home safely. The search for the woman took about one hour, but would have taken much longer without the help of the unmanned aircraft. The video shows a DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual as the drone that likely was used during the search. The woman was found during daylight conditions. There is no mention if the use of the thermal camera aided in the search. The missing woman was brought back home safely.

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Last Tuesday, President Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law that pushes federal agencies to start using drones to fight wildfires. The details are described in Sec. 1114. titled “Wildfire technology modernization” of the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. Not only is this new law good for the use of drones in fighting wildfires, but it may also help the use of unmanned aircraft in other industries, such as deliveries by drone, search and rescue missions, and the use of drones for agriculture, inspection and construction.

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More stories of drones doing good this week! On Monday afternoon, a 15-year-old girl who was stranded on the ice of Lake Michigan was rescued successfully after being located with the help of a drone. Members of the Park Township Fire Department deployed a drone (a DJI Mavic 2 it seems based on the photos) to locate the girl. She was found at the bottom of a ledge about 1,000 feet offshore west of the observation deck on the shore of the Idlewood Beach neighborhood.

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After having used the DJI Matrice 210 for the first time in a training session earlier in the morning, the Halifax firefighters successfully used the unmanned aircraft in a search-and-rescue later that same day. On a dark and cold night in December the firefighters decided to send their new drone up one more time in their search for a missing person. The search had officially been called off, but the firefighters went ahead anyway. This time they used a different angle with their thermal camera and they found the semi-conscious man under a bridge. The man was picked up and rushed to the hospital. It was a turning point for the firefighters and they realized drones are much more than just a toy.

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Landmines or anti-personnel explosives have been prohibited since 1977, however, so many of them have been used around the world that they continue to kill or injure around 10 people per day. The mines are hidden from sight and some of them, like the Russian-made Butterfly mine, are near impossible to detect with traditional mine-sweeping techniques. Two college students at New York’s Binghamton University, however, have found a solution to spot these landmines by using hacked consumer drones, such as a DJI Phantom, outfitted with infrared cameras.

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