Multisensory Surveillance Drone for Survivor Detection and Geolocalization in Complex Post-Disaster Environment

The large scale natural disasters often result in a large death victim number and severe damage to buildings. Although some of the impacts can be reduced by the foreseeable future, they cannot be fully eliminated. In order to minimize the victim number, we propose a multisensory surveillance drone system employed an autonomous and robust unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with multiple sensors for specifically enhancing the search and rescue mission to detect the survivors in the post-disaster area. As the main sensors, we employ an ultra-wideband radar; microphone array, camera, and an RFID reader. For making the geolocalization of the detected survivors, we also employ laser range finder and LIDAR. This paper will discuss briefly the system design and the development progress of the project. Besides, the next step of the development is also presented.