Coordinated Autonomous Operation of UAVs in Urban First Responder Scenarios

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly gaining in popularity and it is expected that many millions of these devices will be in operation within the next few years. UAVs are increasingly being considered for use in emergency response situations, where they can reduce first responders' exposure to unnecessary danger and enhance the effectiveness of the responders, for example by providing additional information such as unique viewing angles or fast deployment of specialized sensors. It is expected that most UAV operation will occur in cities, which will require the development of infrastructure and tools that enable safe and effective deployments of UAVs in urban settings. This project will support a planning process to identify the specific requirements for safe UAV operation for emergency response scenarios. Toward this end, the project team will collaborate with fire fighters to explore the challenges and benefits of UAV support for various rescue scenarios. Additionally, the project will use these collaborations and various activities and meetings to initiate fruitful discussions among the project team and potential collaborators and stakeholders in academia, industry, and city planning. It is expected that the planning activity will ultimately lead to the development of a proposal to fully implement the infrastructure and tools required for safe UAV for various application scenarios.

Over 80% of the US population reside in urban areas, which means that most UAV operation will occur in densely populated areas that are characterized by potentially dense and fluctuating traffic patterns, close proximity to humans and buildings, unreliable GPS, overhead flight paths, and fluctuating environmental conditions. Enabling independently controlled UAVs with diverse objectives, constraints, and capabilities to operate in such an environment is a challenging proposition. The long-term goal of this project is to develop cross-disciplinary solutions to urban UAV flight, integrating systems design, control theory, and software engineering research to specifically address technical aspects of urban UAV deployment for emergency response situations. The project team will complete a comprehensive needs assessment for the deployment of UAVs in urban emergency response scenarios. A main goal of this planning grant is to identify various stakeholders in the community involved in emergency response (e.g., fire, medical, disaster planning, etc.), their specific needs that can be addressed using UAVs, the opportunities provided by the UAVs, and the specific challenges of urban UAV emergency response support. An additional goal is to obtain deeper insights into the larger societal concerns with UAV operation, including ethics and policy challenges. The project team will organize a series of hands-on training sessions for various rescue operations, which will be used to highlight the potential benefits of UAVs, identify the concrete needs of emergency rescue teams, and elicit discussions among the various stakeholders that will ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges of urban UAV deployments.