Problem: Hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, forest fires, and explosions are disasters unfortunately common in today’s world. The recent havoc and destruction caused by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma imperiled the lives of tens of thousands of civilians; many were displaced, went missing, or were killed as a result of these disasters. Agencies such as the USCG employ their vast resources in SAR missions to ensure that those whose lives are in jeopardy can be located and removed from harm’s way.

In the event of a natural disaster, land terrain may change to the point of being unrecognizable from the ground. What was once a road to the local supermarket could become as untraversable as the San Andreas Fault. The chances of finding or even reaching targets within these disaster sites with land vehicles is slim to none. These targets include, but are not limited to: trapped humans, animals, and high priority government property. One possible solution to this is aerial access. However, aerial systems manned by humans are very expensive. For example, search and rescue operations conducted in Alaska’s Denali Park and Preserve cost $18,000-$29,000 per operation [1]. In addition, search and rescue missions are often dangerous, putting the SAR team at risk. These problems can be mitigated by using unmanned aerial systems.

The UHDT team is working to provide a solution to these problems by developing a UAS that will compete in the AUVSI SUAS competition to encourage the research and development of drones capable of SAR operations. Since the AUVSI SUAS competition simulates SAR operations, the UHDT UAS will be developed comply with the rules and complete the tasks of the competition.

There are several areas which can be improved upon for this year’s competition. Currently, the problems carried over from last year include: poor organization of internal components, lack of autonomous landing capabilities, lack of in-flight image transfer, and an inefficient image processing method. Furthermore, there are some obstacles that UASs cannot overcome that are less problematic for traditional manned SAR operations. The UHDT team does not intend to design a system to completely replace conventional SAR methods, but to supplement them by minimizing the time and money required to locate the targets of interest. This will facilitate the deployment of the proper SAR method to rescue the target. These are the technical issues that the UHDT team will be resolving this year.

Goal: The purpose of VIP UHDT is to create an autonomous UAS that successfully performs all expected obligations of the 2018 AUVSI Seafarer SUAS competition to a higher degree than that of last year’s system.

References:

[1] – Staff, WKRG. “Coast Guard Completes Search and Rescue Operations in Response to Harvey.” WKRG, 7 Sept. 2017, wkrg.com/2017/09/07/coast-guard-completes-search-and-rescue-operations-in-response-to-harvey/. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017.

Program Manager: Kalani Danas Rivera

Chief Engineer: David Harris

Team Captain: Grace Hayashi

Financial Officer: Austin Morishita

Mission Operations: Eliesse Hihara, Casey Jones

Aircraft Systems Lead: Kenji Rutter

Electronics Systems Lead: Reyn Mukai

Image Processing Systems Lead: Aaron Villanueva

Aircraft Subsystem:  Sung Wan Park, Nicholas Yamamoto, Igor Melnichenko, Kristen-Ann Wong,

Keola Wong, Kody Wakumoto, Peyton Young

Electronics Subsystem: Kurt Tanaka, Justin Pagtolingan, Alicia Leong

Images Processing Subsystem: Jaymark Ganibi, Austin Haigh, Matthan Mejia

Last Updated: 02/05/2018