Firemen monitoring with multiple UAVs for search and rescue missions

This paper describes a multi-UAV firemen monitoring mission carried out in the framework of the AWARE Project. Several firemen were located in an area in front of a simulated building assisting injured people and moving equipment. The objective of the user was to have an estimation of the location of the firemen on the map and also images of their operations. Two autonomous helicopters were available and ready on the landing pads for this mission. The techniques adopted to compute the required waypoints for the observation of the firemen from the UAVs are described in the paper. The detailed description of a firemen monitoring mission used to validate the approach is also provided.