SARA: Search and Rescue Assistant

Abstract

After significant natural disasters or terrorist attacks in urban locations, structural collapses trap citizens deep under building materials, causing injury, loss of consciousness, and death. Search and rescue (SAR) teams have limited time to find and rescue survivors, and the main methods of sensing survivors are limited to sniffing dogs, cameras, and auditory/seismic sensors that restrict search to barely under the top layer of debris. These situations can be dangerous for the SAR teams and so there has been research into the development of unmanned vehicles with mounted sensors to access difficult to reach locations, reducing the risk to SAR volunteers [3]. However, the research into remote sensing is limited and this inefficiency increases the risk of trapped victims experiencing permanent injury or death while awaiting rescue. The goal of the SARA is to address the shortcomings seen in this research and increase the efficiency of search and rescue operations.