Lifeguards use a drone to help rescue people in danger of drowning
businessinsider.com.au
businessinsider.com.au
I definitely would have felt safer knowing there was a drone in the sky above me, ready to drop a flotation device on me. Our lifesavers do a great job, but it's a long, long way from the beach out to a drowning swimmer.
The presence of drones will likely encourage people to take more risks in rough surf. The same thing happened with car air bags-- when they were introduced, people with airbags drove more aggressively, negating the safety benefit.
It wasn't a conscious choice. It was only something I became aware of once I'd had that dangerous experience in the water.
Risk management is a funny thing.
It's there a "pocket-sized" buoyancy aid that locks into a small canister you can strap to your wrist/ankle? I'd guess not due to insurance liabilities.
Yes, yes there is. It straps to your wrist and uses a CO2 canister like the ones used to inflate bicycle tyres: https://www.amazon.com/Kingii-Lightweight-Wearable-Portable-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At3xcj-pTjg
Casey Neistat worked with a team to create a drone capable of lifting him and his snowboard in heavy ski gear/boots. I bet you could make something like this to lift a drowning swimmer to the beach.
It's why most multirotors over a certain size use variable pitch rotors, like a helicopter. And at some point, the complexity of managing multiple variable-pitch rotors just makes the single rotor design of a helicopter more efficient; especially when it can be powered by a gas engine.
Of course, a normal helicopter can be run remotely just as effectively as a multi-rotor.
Traditional multi-rotors, like the one featured in this article, maneuver by quickly changing the speed of the props with respect to the other props to change the attitude of the craft. The larger the prop, and thus the greater the inertia, the harder it is to quickly change the rotational velocity of those rotors.
Which is why helicopters tend to use variable pitch props, since they can alter the lift (and rotational force) generated by the prop without having to change the velocity. Well, that and variable pitch props let you create differential lift (such as tilting the helicopter into forward flight) with a single rotor as well. :)
However, many (probably all, but I don't know for sure) heavy lift or rescue helicopters are multi-engine. For example, the Westland Sea King (Powerplant: 2 × Rolls-Royce Gnome H1400-2 turboshafts, 1,660 shp (1,238 kW) each)[1] or a newer Sikorsky S-92 (Powerplant: 2 × General Electric CT7-8A turboshaft, 2,520 shp (1,879 kW) each).[2]
Here's a document from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in Australia, concerning performance standards for multi-engine helicopters. It provides a pretty good overview of what they need to be able to do with one engine inoperative (OEI).[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_Sea_King
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-92
[3] https://www.casa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net351/f/_assets/main/...
Lets think again.
That looked like a relatively calm day but that's rare, especially coupled with rough seas.
Don't like conspiracies but that almost looked to good to be true.
I routinely fly my DJI Mavic in 20MPH winds and it handles fine. You have to be mindful of how long it'll take to fly back upwind, but actually keeping it in the air is a piece of cake.
There's a huge difference in stability between sub-$100 throwaway drones many of us have played with and "serious" units in the $1,000+ range. Even on sport mode, you'd have to work pretty hard to crash a mavic in an open field (i.e., short of flying it sideways into a tree). I'm sure commercial, life-saving drones that cost 2 orders of magnitude more are on yet another level still.
Sea spray (fine droplets of salt water) would indeed have an effect, but more over the long term than immediate problems since the motors are brushless. Brushless motors are not terribly susceptible to shorts from water, and the only other vulnerable component - the battery - would be hard to short out by sea spray alone.
I guess software could be written to calculate the best spot to drop the raft, but still the winds are fickle.
If the raft wasn’t dropped precisely it might be pointless as most people in a panic would struggle to get to it.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/family/2013...
> To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the No. 2 cause of accidental death in children, ages 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents)—of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult.
This stat always rubs me the wrong way. It paints the image of a parent watching their child drown, but I imagine it's pretty easy to be within 25 yards of the pool and have no visibility to the pool.
I watched a video of a life guard jumping into a large crowded pool, swimming towards a certain location. Even though I knew somebody is drowning there, my untrained eyes couldn’t spot the drowning person until the life guard almost reached the child. Everyone next to the child was completely oblivious and looked funny at the lifeguard wondering why he is swimming towards them.
There's usually no splashing, hand waving, yelling, or anything like what people normally think drowning looks like.
A company in Iran developed a lifeguard drone called Pars, in 2013: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24929924
I couldn't find any information about the Pars drone being used in a rescue.
Yes, I've seen the video where Casey Neistat hangs off a drone in ski gear. But to attempt a rescue, the drone is pulling against somebody who isn't trained (more movement means harder to stabilize). You're also fighting against the ocean, so you're going to need extra power to pull the person against the waves, at least until you get them plucked out.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the drone will need to operate quite a bit higher up to stay safely clear of water and heavy spray, so the person would be at the end of a much longer rope, and a longer rope means the system is a longer "pendulum", which again means it'll take more energy to stabilize it.
An ocean rescue is going to happen on a warm day, whereas the Casey Neistat video was done in cold, dense air where drones are more efficient.
I would not be surprised if it takes an order of magnitude more energy, at the drone, to pull a person out of the ocean that it takes to lift a calm person on dry land. That's a big hill to climb.
In case of severe bad weather could work, sometimes. Ropes attached to a heavy engine that could crash and sink in seconds can be very dangerous in water.