A Sociotechnical Approach to UAV Safety for Search and Rescue Missions

Nowadays search and rescue teams are using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to complete important tasks. Unfortunately, the safety aspect of UAVs during search and rescue missions from a sociotechnical point of view has not been excessively studied. In this paper, the Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) has been applied to a fully autonomous UAV system called ROLFER (Robotic Lifeguard For Emergency Rescue). ROLFER has two operational modes. The first one indicates the preparations that have to take place before the ROLFERs SAR missions and the second mode indicates the actual SAR mission of the UAV. STPA was applied in both operational modes and identified new safety specifications between the technical components of the system and the human administration during the preparation phase, during the checks between each SAR mission and also on the interactions involving the human components of ROLFER which the developers of ROLFER have not initially considered.