Avalanche Rescue with Autonomous Drones

In avalanche rescues, quick operations make a real difference between survival or death. Organized search and rescue operations require large intervention time since professionals are not directly present in the distressed area. For this reason, companion rescue is still the most effective option for localizing and extracting people involved in avalanche incidents. In this context autonomous drones equipped with avalanche transceivers can assist ground operations by reducing localization time, therefore increasing the survival rate. In this paper, technologies and strategies for avalanche rescue with autonomous drones are introduced and their performances are assessed with respect to operational scenarios. In particular, avalanche transceivers operability on board of small autonomous vehicles is evaluated and optimal beacon search trajectories are investigated.