DJI UAS Collect Information to Help Deal With Flooding in Houston

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Texas A&M’s Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) flew a series of unmanned aircraft flights over flooded regions in Texas in April and May, assessing property damage, monitoring floodwaters and helping local officials deal with the impact.

The center operated 21 flights in April and May on behalf of Roboticists Without Borders, which drew a positive response from the public, becoming a “popular and useful asset,” according to CRASAR Director Robin Murphy.

The flights were made by low-cost DJI Phantom and Inspire UAS, and experts from DataWing Global, CartoFusion Technologies, USAA, and Texas A&M, embedded with the Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management and the Fort Bend County Drainage District, to conduct the operations.

The results of the successful use of the UAS were published in a paper called the Two Case Studies and Gaps Analysis of Flood Assessment for Emergency Management with Small Unmanned Aerial Systems, and will be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Safety Security and Rescue Robotics in Lausanne, Switzerland, next week. 

CRASAR also recently worked with the Italian coast guard in Genoa, Italy, to test out the EMILY (Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard) lifeguard assistance USV and its ability to assist with recovery efforts of migrants trapped at sea.

During the exercise, which was put together by professors from Italian universities and representatives from the Italian coast guard in Genova, EMILY was tested in coordination with LTE cellular communications, to see if the USV could serve as a response to mass casualty events that occur at sea.

The hope of CRASAR and the Italian Coast Guard is that EMILY, built by Arizona-based Hydronalix, can be used to send out on rescue missions, and give people something to latch on to while lifeguards attend to people who are facing even more dire circumstances.

Earlier this year, CRASAR sent out EMILY USVs to Greece when people were migrating from Turkey. Currently, two EMILYs are being used by the Hellenic coast guard and Hellenic Red Cross, and according to the coast guard, the USV has helped save more than two dozen refugees trapped in high seas.

Video footage of the exercise can be seen here.

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