Canadian Drones Save Lives

While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may not be a big part of your life right now, one day they just might save it.

In May 2013, the Saskatchewan RCMP reported the first life saved by a UAV in Canada. A man driving in near-freezing temperatures wearing only a t-shirt had flipped his car off the road in a remote, wooded area.  The man managed to call 911 but did not know where he was so only the last recorded location on his cell phone’s GPS was used. The police had originally deployed a regular, manned helicopter equipped with night vision to try and find him, but they weren't able to during an initial sweep of the area.

The RCMP eventually deployed their Draganflyer X4-E5 UAV which was equipped with an infrared camera. The UAV soon picked up three heat signatures 200 meters from the last known GPS location, where fire department members found the driver curled next to a tree.  According to the RCMP’s website that without the UAV, searchers would not have been able to locate the driver until daylight meaning he would have frozen to death before he could have been reached.

UAV’s are still in their genesis when it comes to bringing life-saving supplies to remote areas. Germany’s logistics company DHL will begin daily flights with their quad-rotor "DHL Paketkopter 2.0" to bring a maximum load of 1.2 kilograms of medicine to the sparsely populated German island of ‘Juist,’ located just off the nation’s northern coast. Flying up to 65kmph with the flight expected to take as long as 30 minutes, this is the first time an unmanned aircraft has been authorized to deliver goods in Europe. With medication, other urgently needed goods will also be transported, at times when other modes of transport such as flights or ferries are not operating.