Project investigates potential of UAVs for disaster response

The AUS$7m (£4.6m) Project ResQu brings together the nation’s top aerospace experts from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Boeing Research & Technology-Australia, Boeing subsidiary Insitu Pacific and CSIRO.

‘As a result of our research, UAVs fitted with cameras will be able to help pinpoint communities and people in need of rescue during natural disasters and to regularly monitor the health of the environment such as finding invasive weeds in rainforests,’ said Prof Duncan Campbell, director of the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA) at QUT.

‘This potentially life-saving technology will not only help provide accurate information during disasters but also enable air rescue crews to better target their response.’

According to Campbell, if UAVs had been able to fly in civil airspace during last year’s Queensland floods, they could have played a critical role in assisting in the disaster response.

‘Because they can fly for extended periods of time in conditions considered too dangerous for manned aircraft, they are ideally suited to search-and-rescue activities, as well as flood mapping, conducting damage assessments and delivering aid to remote communities,’ he said.