CMU RI Seminar: UAV-Enabled Wilderness Search and Rescue (WiSAR)

Wilderness Search and Rescue (WiSeR) operations include finding and giving assistance to humans who are lost or injured in mountain, desert, lake, river, or other remote settings. WiSeR is a challenging task that requires many hours of effort by people with specialized training. These searches, which consume thousands of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in Utah alone, are often very slow because of the large distances and challenging terrain that must be searched. Moreover, timeliness of the search is critical; for every hour that passes, the search radius must increase by approximately 3km, and the probability of finding and successfully aiding the victim decreases.

This talk will present research on using small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to assist in WiSeR tasks. Topics include an analysis of how WiSeR is currently done, how UAVs can be used to support the current efforts, and the development of key technologies that make UAV-enabled WiSeR possible. Discussion will include designing UAV autonomy, modeling victim behavior, creating interfaces that allow the UAV to be effectiently tasked, and presenting imagery in a way that increases the probability of finding a victim.

Bio:
Michael A. Goodrich is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Brigham Young University. Before joining BYU, he completed a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and spent two years as a post-doctoral research associate at Nissan Cambridge Basic Research. His research is driven by a desire to understand intelligence. Toward this goal, he works on problems in human-robot interaction, multi-agent learning, and intelligent vehicle systems.