1555 results about "Search and rescue" patented technology

The present invention relates to a system and method for providing location determination in a configured environment in which Global Navigation Satellite System Signals are not available. In this regard, local beacon systems generate spread spectrum CDMA signals that are received by spectral compression units that derive physically meaningful observations without a requirement for correlation of the intercepted energy by means of the known spreading codes. The invention can coexist with communication assets already in place, and the design allows for self calibration, which simplifies installation and usage. The invention has utility in applications in which GNSS signals are unavailable or limited, for example, in warehouse inventory management, in search and rescue operations and in asset tracking in indoor environments.

The Multi-Rotor Safety Shield (MRSS) provides a complete and substantial encasement system which can be secured about a Drone, protecting a multitude of aircraft components from contact with any outside disturbance and which can protect the sensitive components from dust, water, wind, rain, snow, fingers, toes, appendages of any kind, and atmospheric changes as example, from disabling the Drone and can protect people, places or things from high velocity spinning exposed rotor / propellers. The MRSS provides rigid non-permeable platform for attaching or incorporating additional safety devices as found in the Drone industry (or other industries) resulting in a safety device that completely prevents the loss a Drone due to the catastrophic failure of any Drone system or combination of systems which would typically result in rapid decent, and / or uncontrolled flight. The MRSS makes Drones safe near humans and safe to use around public gatherings, stadium events, accident scenes, disaster search and rescue and disaster relief, and indoors for the security and communications markets among others expanding the availability of Drones to further assist humanity.

An autonomous obstacle avoidance and navigation method for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based field search and rescue provided by the invention includes global navigation based on GPS signals and anautonomous obstacle avoidance and navigation algorithm based on binocular vision and ultrasound. First, a UAV carries out search under the navigation of GPS signals according to a planned path. Aftera target is found, the autonomous obstacle avoidance and navigation algorithm based on binocular vision and ultrasound is adopted. A binocular camera acquires a disparity map containing depth information. The disparity map is re-projected to a 3D space to get a point cloud. A cost map is established according to the point cloud. The path is re-planned using the cost map to avoid obstacles. When there is no GPS signal, a visual inertial odometry (VIO) is used to ensure that the UAV flies according to the planned path, and an ultrasonic sensor is used to detect and avoid obstacles below the UAVto approach the rescued target. UAV autonomous obstacle avoidance and navigation in a field search and rescue scene is realized.

The invention relates to a mine environment probing and search and rescue emergency response system based on a wireless sensor network, which comprises various intelligent wireless sensor network nodes, a plurality of backbone routing nodes of an underground wireless network, an underground wireless sensor network gateway, a fiber optic modem, an attendance reader, an IP network switch, a network server, a database center and a monitoring center, and has environment monitoring function before occurrence of accidents, positioning and tracking function in mine operation, electronic attendance function on operating miners, dynamic network repair function after the occurrence of the accidents, wireless voice calling function between ground and underground, and video monitoring and search and rescue function. The system can improve mine safety production management level, promote mine information construction, reduce occurrence of coalmine accidents, quicken the search and rescue process in mine disasters and the like, provides important information platform and has great application value.

A wireless communication network 20 operates in an emergency mode 22. In one example, network components enter an emergency mode 24. In another example, mobile stations enter an emergency mode 26. Various disclosed emergency mode features such as having a dedicated emergency channel, using dedicated emergency devices, using mobile stations as repeaters, providing alive user indications and utilizing beacon signals can be combined in different ways to facilitate search and rescue operations, for example.

Systems, including apparatus and methods, for obtaining and / or correcting images, particularly from atmospheric and / or other distortions. These corrections may involve, among others, determining corrective information in a first (e.g., visible) wavelength regime, and then applying the corrective information in a second (e.g., longer) wavelength regime, such as infrared (IR) or millimeter-wave (MMW) wavelengths, in real time or with post-processing. For example, these corrections may include scaling a phase diversity correction from one wavelength to another. These systems may be useful in any suitable imaging context, including navigation, targeting, search and rescue, law enforcement, and / or surveillance, among others.

The present invention discloses a method for increasing the channel capacity of a communications network, comprising a plurality of one-way TDMA transmitters sharing said channel, and at least one compatible receiver, by reducing transmission collisions among said transmitters. This is achieved by coupling a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) decoder, such as a GPS receiver, to each transmitter, and limiting transmissions to discrete time slots, determined by timing signals provided by said GNSS. Further, this basic set of time slots is divided into several sub sets, and each transmitter selects a sub set of time slots according to its geographic location, in order to enable reusing time slots in spaced apart areas, as frequencies are reused in cellular networks. Then, each transmitter selects its own transmission time slot, from said sub set, in a way that statistically minimizes collisions among nearby transmitters. The present invention does not intend to ensure collision-free communications, yet is projected to reduce the transmission collision rate among simplex in nature transmitters, which have no means to detect other transmissions, or discover if a transmission was successful. One embodiment of this invention is related to distress radio beacons in satellite based Search and Rescue (SAR) systems, such as Cospas-Sarsat.

Many different types of systems are utilized or tasks are performed in a marine environment. The present invention provides various configurations of unmanned vehicles, or drones, that can be operated and / or controlled for such systems or tasks. One or more unmanned vehicles can be integrated with a dedicated marine electronic device of a marine vessel for autonomous control and operation. Additionally or alternatively, the unmanned vehicle can be manually remote operated during use in the marine environment. Such unmanned vehicles can be utilized in many different marine environment systems or tasks, including, for example, navigation, sonar, radar, search and rescue, video streaming, alert functionality, among many others. However, as contemplated by the present invention, the marine environment provides many unique challenges that may be accounted for with operation and control of an unmanned vehicle.

A Personal Locator Beacon (PLB), supporting two operation modes local monitoring and remote monitoring. The apparatus includes a PLB that supports the present operation mode, as well as a local monitoring mode, employing the same transmitter, and automatically switching between modes. Upon activation, the PLB first tries to communicate with a local monitoring station, at a low transmission power, and at a high repetition rate, in purpose of dealing with the PLB call locally, without involving the remote monitoring station. Then, if not acknowledged by a local monitoring station, the PLB increases its transmission power, enabling access to a remote monitoring station. In a preferred embodiment, the PLB is carried by a person onboard a vessel, to alarm upon a Man Overboard (MOB) accident, the local monitoring station is installed onboard the same vessel, and the remote monitoring station is part of a satellite Search and Rescue (SAR) system, as Cospas-Sarsat.

The invention discloses a ground-air heterogeneous multi-robot search and rescue system, which comprises air flying robots, a plurality of ground rescue robots, an image processing computer, an image acquisition card, a monitoring computer, search and rescue command personnel, a wireless data transmission radio, a wireless image transmission radio, obstacles, and objects to be rescued. The air flying robots are responsible for carrying out rapid and systematic large-area reconnaissance on the rescue site so as to more accurately judge the rescue site conditions, find out the positions of the obstacles or objects to be rescued, and help the search and rescue command personnel formulate detailed rescue plan. The ground rescue robot group, according to control instructions issued by the search and rescue command personnel, cooperatively executes the search and rescue work of the objects to be rescued at the rescue site. The robots in the system all adopt the control mode combining the autonomous intelligent control with remote control of the search and rescue command personnel; by the coordination of a plurality of ground-air robots with different structures, the system improves the reliability and accuracy of rescue site environmental perception and object recognition, reduces the search spread time and improves the rescue efficiency.

The invention belongs to the technical field of a distributed control system and relates, specifically, to a multi-agent cluster coordination method and a multi-UAV cluster coordination system. The multi-agent cluster coordination method of the invention allows agents to exchange information with neighbors within their respective interaction ranges and to form a cluster in a self-organized manner by solving for the control input through distributed mode predictive control. The method further allows the presence of a leader agent in the system to lead the overall motion trajectory of the agent cluster. The multi-UAV cluster coordination system provided by the invention enables multiple UAVs to autonomously achieve cluster flight through data exchange thereamong, enhances the efficiency of executing the tasks that need the coverage of a large area, such as aerial photography, monitoring, search and rescue, and the like, and has high adaptivity and redundancy.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) having at least one sensor for detecting the presence of a survivor in a search and rescue area. The at least one sensor is preferably an ultra-wide band (UWB) transceiver sensor. The UAV includes a UAV data link transceiver for wirelessly communicating information concerning the survivor to a command center.

A robot or vehicle locomotes by tumbling. Legs distributed over the surface of the robot individually extend or retract. A control system coordinates the action of the legs to cause the robot to tumble in any direction. A robot using this form of locomotion is highly maneuverable, can climb slopes, and can step over obstacles. It can provide a smooth ride on rugged terrain. A variation can jump into the air and land safely. A variation can be built with as few as six moving parts, can fold to fit into a projectile, and instantly unfold on landing. It may use airbags instead of legs. It can include a video system without moving parts that produces a stable, non-tumbling view of its surroundings while tumbling. It is an ideal remotely operated vehicle for search and rescue, firefighting, or reconnaissance for the military or police.

This invention builds on previous industry techniques to correlate data from a variety of sources for the purposes of tracking and identifying aircraft, vehicles, and marine vessels in real time over a variety of different areas including oceans and mountainous terrain. Passive broadband tracking of aircraft emitters, and electronic fingerprinting of emitters, correlated with audio, video, infrared, primary radar and other information is employed to provide a comprehensive assessment of an aircraft's position, track and identification for a variety of applications including homeland security and search and rescue.

The present invention discloses a communication system and method for determining and recording the geographical location of an object attached with a short range wireless device, over a wide area, in a vicinity of a radio beacon that can be located by a remote control station, upon establishing or interrupting a wireless connection between said wireless device and said radio beacon. One embodiment of the invention relates to a system for search and rescue of a man overboard (person overboard), a quite frequent and fatal accident at sea.

An emergency position information radio beacon utilized in conjunction with a global positioning system that receives latitude and longitude information continuously in which the GPS data is periodically transferred into the EPIRB before activation in order to preserve battery power in the EPIRB. The EPIRB includes a first micro controller that is connected by an electro / optical data input to the GPS with the first micro controller being a very low power drain. Periodically, such as every 10 minutes, latitude and longitude information is transferred from the GPS into the EPIRB memory after which the EPIRB memory and system is maintained in a sleep mode with no power consumption. This insures that the EPIRB has geographical position information data before activation that can be transmitted with the emergency signal to search and rescue at the same time preserving the battery power of the EPIRB which is utilized only during the emergency period. The system is power off 99.99% of the time preserving the EPIRB battery.

The invention relates to a multi-freedom degree bird-like flapping wing air vehicle. The multi-freedom degree bird-like flapping wing air vehicle comprises a driving mechanism, two twisting mechanisms, an empennage mechanism, two flexible joint structures and a machine frame. The multi-freedom degree bird-like flapping wing air vehicle is simple and compact in structure, and fully-symmetrical flapping wing movement can be realized. Two rubber flexible grooved mechanisms are arranged, so that the flapping wing air vehicle can fly like a bird; flapping wings are curved and folded, so that when the flapping wings flap upwards, a stressed area is reduced, and the resistance is reduced; when the flapping wings flap downwards, the wing extending area is the largest; besides, outer wings can also be passively bent in a flight direction by air resistance, so that great lifting force and great thrust are generated; steering engines are adopted to control inner wing rods so as to change the elevation angle of the flapping wings, the multi-freedom degree bird-like flapping wing air vehicle conforms to the effect that upward flapping resistance is less than downward flapping lifting force in aerodynamics, and the aerodynamic efficiency is improved; the two steering engines are utilized to control the deflection of the empennage, so that operating and controlling of the flight attitude of the flapping wing air vehicle are facilitated. The multi-freedom degree bird-like flapping wing air vehicle disclosed by the invention can be used in the fields of models, aerial photography monitoring, information collecting, disaster searching and rescuing, airport bird expelling and the like.

The invention discloses a ship target detection and identification method for a satellite-borne remote sensing optical image. The method comprises the following steps of preprocessing, ineffective information removal, connected region marking, feature extraction and classifier design. A coarse-to-fine strategy is adopted, firstly, a satellite image is subjected to downsampling and Gaussian filtering processing, then, land and isolated noisy points are removed from the processed image, a candidate region is quickly extracted and is marked, feature information is extracted after the image is rotated, then, the feature information is put into a pre-trained classifier to be furthered confirmed and analyzed, false alarms are removed, and a real ship target is found. Meanwhile, the invention also realizes a ship target detection and identification system for the satellite-bone remote sensing optical image. By use of the technical scheme, satellite-borne storage and calculation of limited resources can be effectively utilized to improve the stability and the real time of a ship detection algorithm, meanwhile, a false alarm rate is effectively lowered, and accurate data can be provided for maritime search and rescue and ship image positioning in time.

The invention discloses a vehicle flooding monitoring system and method. The monitoring system comprises a BCM, wherein the BCM controls a center control door lock, all window glass motors and all safety belt buckles, the BCM is externally connected with a plurality of liquid level sensors arranged on the periphery of a vehicle body in an annular mode, and the liquid level sensors include outer-circle liquid level sensors and inner-circle liquid level sensors. According to the vehicle flooding monitoring system and method, the corresponding liquid level sensors are arranged on the periphery of the vehicle body, blooding signals are transmitted to the BCM, all vehicle doors, all window glass and all safety belts can be opened in time when a vehicle is flooded or submerged, so that time and channels are provided for drivers and passengers to escape; meanwhile, distress signals and vehicle positioning signals are sent out to facilitate searching and rescuing of rescue workers.

The invention relates to a real time wireless positioning method for underground coal mine workers, which comprises a distributing-type real time positioning scheme, an arranging method for fixing beacon nodes inside coal mine channels, and a converting method between a RSSI value and an actual distance. The invention can be used widely for various coal mine monitoring systems, tracks and monitors for moving targets as the underground workers can be implemented conveniently, thereby safe production can be guaranteed, in particular after accidents occur, searches and rescues with pertinentinge for the underground workers are available according to historical data which is stored before the accidents occur, and loss due to the accidents can be lowered. Simultaneously the invention is beneficial for coal mine managers to adjust work and thereby monitoring managing level and working efficiency of whole coal mines can be increased.

The invention relates to an explosion-proof robot platform used in search and rescue operation under coal mines, comprising an explosion-proof housing (1), a driving wheel unit (3), a driven wheel and swing arm unit (6), a traveling driving motor unit (14) and a swing arm rotary driving motor unit (15). The explosion-proof robot platform is characterized in that the driving wheel unit (3) and the driven wheel and swing arm unit (6) are symmetrically positioned at the two ends of the explosion-proof housing (1); the traveling driving motor unit (14) positioned in the explosion-proof housing (1) is connected with the driving wheel unit (3); the swing arm rotary driving motor unit (15) positioned in the explosion-proof housing is connected with the driven wheel and swing arm unit (6); a main track (4) is positioned between the driving wheel (26) of the driving wheel unit (3) and the driven wheel (39) of the driven wheel and swing arm unit (6); an auxiliary track (53) is positioned on the swing arm of the driven wheel and swing arm unit (6); an explosion-proof joint surface is used in the joint with the explosion-proof housing, suitable for search and rescue operation under coal mines.

The invention relates to the technical field of wireless communication, in particular to an unmanned aerial vehicle and a search and rescue positioning method for the unmanned aerial vehicle. The unmanned aerial vehicle comprises a wireless signal detection module, a main control processing module and a plurality of directional antennas, wherein the wireless signal detection module can be used for building connection with a ground terminal and receiving signals sent by the ground terminal through the multiple directional antennas in the different directions, and accordingly the intensity of the signals is determined; the main control processing module determines the motion vector corresponding to the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the signal intensity vector corresponding to the multiple directional antennas, accordingly, the motion direction is determined, and the unmanned aerial vehicle is controlled to move in the motion direction. The unmanned aerial vehicle can detect a signal of a ground terminal carried on a searched and rescued person, automatically determine the moving direction and fly through the self-contained wireless signal detection module and the self-contained directional antennas, thus, the unmanned aerial vehicle can automatically adjust the flight path and quickly determine the position of the searched and rescued person without being controlled to fly manually, and the unmanned aerial vehicle has quick search capacity and higher rescue efficiency.

The present invention is crawler type multiple joint hinged robot suitable for searching and detecting in coal mine, and belongs to the field of robot technology. The robot of the present invention is superior to available ones, which have easy turnover and poor obstacle performance. The robot of the present invention has power source module, control and sensing module, loading module, head module, tail module and hinging unit module hinged to form snake shape, and each of the modules has crawler in the surface, with the crawler being controlled with the motor in separate modules. The robot has raised obstacle crossing capacity, powerful moving capacity, high reliability and rich sensing functions, and is suitable for searching and rescuing.

The invention relates to a target positioning method and a target positioning device for airborne equipment. The device comprises a signal processing unit, a laser distance measuring instrument, a thermal infrared imager, a visible light camera, a combined inertial navigation module and an angle meter, wherein output signals of the laser distance measuring instrument, the thermal infrared imager, the visible light camera, the combined inertial navigation module and the angle meter are all connected to the signal processing unit, and the signal processing unit is used for solving positional information of a target according to uploaded signals. Aerial carrier global positioning system (GPS) information, aerial carrier gesture information, angular deviation of observation equipment relative to an aerial carrier and distance measuring information of the target by the observation equipment are integrated to realize accurate positioning of longitude and latitude height of the target. The advantage of a multi-sensor is combined, a multi-dimensional spatial alternation principle is utilized so as to rapidly and effectively realize accurate target positioning in a non-contact and high-adaptability way, and the target positioning method can be applied to fields such as forest fire prevention, personnel rapid search and rescue and the like, and has wide technological and market prospects.

The invention provides a multifunctional rescuing and barrier-breaking robot which is characterized in that a barrier breaking mechanism is arranged in front of a robot body, a shovel mechanism for breaking barriers to walk on as well as carrying and transferring articles is arranged at the rear of the robot body, crawler traveling mechanisms are arranged at two sides below a chassis (32) of the robot body, and an electric control board control unit for controlling the robot to actuate is arranged on the chassis (32); the barrier breaking mechanism is used for breaking barriers by turning the head when the robot meets barriers; the barrier breaking mechanism is provided with two circular saws (19) and two cone drills (22) which are respectively used for achieving the works of breaking barriers respectively under the driving of a motor; and the shovel mechanism is provided with a shovel with lifting and overturning function. The invention can implement functions of breaking barriers, carrying and moving, searching and rescuing, positioning at the real time, loading rescue goods, and the like under the long-distance control in a plurality of sudden disaster accidents and more hostile environments so as to realize fast rescuing and has the advantages of small size, high flexibility, more practical functions, and the like.