UAV Swarming Applications for Search and Rescue Missions

This work in progress paper deals with the potential and the implementation of swarming concepts for the use case of search and rescue missions in afforested areas. Unmanned vehicles provide a valuable instrument to deal with dangerous situations as the lack of an operator reduces human exposure to environmental hazards. To ensure the mission and the funcionality of the unmanned vehicles against failures and losses, swarming is a promising solution. After defining the problem, we present the goal of this work: A robust and reliable swarming structure that is capable of being deployed close to forest fires to scout the dimension of the forest fire and search for survivors, both humans and animals. After detecting survivors, the follow-up task will be to lead them away from the fire towards safety.