Ershad Kamol
Newsroom@DominionPost.com
West Virginia University researchers are writing software for and testing a new prototype of drone for conducting rescue operations for service members lost in battle zones.
The drone will be able to pinpoint the missing personnel without using radio GPS that an enemy can easily intercept, said Guilherme Pereira, who is leading the research team at WVU’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
He said the drone technology would change the way search-and-rescue tasks are executed. All service members carry a small device called Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK). ATAK is an Android smartphone geospatial infrastructure and military situation awareness app that allows precision targeting, surrounding land formation intelligence, navigation and data sharing.
The drone software will be able to connect to the ATAKs without using GPS signals allowing the lost service members to be quickly and safely located.
“It will really be effective in some ambiences like underground, in buildings, forests or in warfare where GPS signals are not available or might be jammed by enemies,” Pereira said.
Four researchers of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering are developing the software in partnership with Kinnami Software Corp. under a 21-month, $300,000 project funded by U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research program.
Pereira is an associate professor of the department. The interim chair of mechanical and aerospace department Jason Gross, and two post-doctoral researchers — Cagri Kilic and Dimas Dutra — are the other members of the research team.
They are developing the operational methods and algorithms to localize drones and people in the same network. As part of the contract, the WVU researchers will provide support for development of Kinnami Software’s data platform, AmiShare.
AmiShare’s software integration with the Robot Operating System for drones and the ATAK app will provide secure peer-to-peer encrypted communications across rescue teams, Dutra said. “At the same time it will prevent enemy hackers from finding the lost person before the rescue team or faking a lost person in a different position.”
AmiShare provides a secure means to share sensitive data in a timely way, such as location or biometrics, which will allow a rescue team to monitor the lost person and their health during the rescue mission, they said.
“As the rescue teams will receive health information from the lost person, it can be used to plan the rescue mission and help prioritize personnel rescue in cases where several people are being rescued,” Pereira said. “ATAKs will also give the search-and-rescue team the ability to control the drones, pointing them to regions with a higher probability of finding lost personal or simply moving them away from other rescue vehicles.
“Once the lost person’s device is connected to the network of the drones, the rescue personnel will have an estimate of their position, thus allowing a fast rescue. So, no GPS signals will be required,” Pereira said.
Dutra said “Even if you lose one drone, you do not compromise the data in the end-to-end encrypted communication system,” Dutra said.
Kilic said that they have already equipped two drones with the communication technologies they are developing. “We are testing those drones in indoor facilities. We’re also trying to localize these drones.
Approximately like three to four drones will be required for conducting the experiment.”
Pereira said they have a demonstration goal.
“As part of the demonstration, three researchers will use tablets to interact with those drones. And one of the researcher will act like a missing person while others will be looking for him using the drones,” he said.
They will relocate the testing to a new indoor robotics testing facility currently under construction in the Statler College of WVU. The final demonstration will be conducted in 2024.
Dutra said the technology they are developing for the rescue operations will be able to be installed in any type of drone, to yield the same result.
