AI-based Human Detection and Localization in Heavy Smoke using Radar and IR Camera

One of the main challenges currently firefighters are facing in search and rescue operations is battling the heavy smoke inside a space that needs to be searched for people and animals. In this work, we develop an integrated system composed of two unique sensing mechanisms that are capable of real-time detection and localization of humans and animals in deep smoke to improve the situational awareness of firefighters on the scene. We make use of data from a micro-Doppler sensor and an infrared camera and train a DCNN algorithm to localize a human in dense smoke in real-time. Experimental results reveal that the proposed system can detect a human in heavy smoke with an averaae of 98 % validation accuracy.