Good little drone
We have all the bad publicity about drones in the media but here is a wonderful story.
From the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police:
Single Vehicle Rollover � Saskatoon RCMP Search for Injured Driver with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
On 2013-05-09 at 00:20 hours, Saskatoon RCMP received a call of a single vehicle rollover on Highway # 5 about 5 km east of St. Denis, Saskatchewan.
RCMP, along with St Denis and Vonda Fire Rescue and EMS from MD Ambulance, responded to the scene. Upon arriving at the scene, emergency responders could not locate the vehicle�s occupants. The examination of the scene indicated that at least one person had been in the vehicle and was injured. A ground search was conducted within 200 meters of the scene, but searchers were unable to locate anyone.
More:
At 03:00, Cpl. Green launched the Dragan Flyer X4-ES (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle � UAV) equipped with a FLIR. Once the UAV was in the air a search was initiated in the area of the last known location of the driver. Three heat signatures showed up on the screen of the FLIR. Cpl. Green directed Vonda Fire Department members towards the first heat signature located in the trees 200 meters from the last known GPS location. Fire /Rescue members located the driver at this first location, curled up in a ball at the base of a tree next to snow bank. He was unresponsive and was quickly brought out to the road by Fire/Rescue and placed in an ambulance and was transported to hospital in Saskatoon. Without the UAV and FLIR, searchers would not have been able to locate the driver until daylight.
Saved his life! Good little drone! Here is an interesting comment and video from the drone's manufacturer -
Draganfly:
To our knowledge, this is the first time that a life may have been saved due to the help of a sUAS helicopter.
Glad that the Saskatoon police had that technology...
Posted by DaveH at May 12, 2013 12:13 PM