Drones for Emergency Services

Since 2008/9 in the UK, unmanned air vehicles have started to be used by the emergency services to provide aerial situational awareness at large, complicated, or protracted incidents. This started off with one or two fire and rescue services using relatively basic (by modern standards) single or quad-rotor systems to provide both live video and thermal imagery feeds to support incident resolution.

As time progresses, there has been a very traditional approach with regards platform selection, with a couple of platforms in the lower price bracket and one main contender in at the very high end of the market. The last year has seen a large development in the UAV platform market, mostly taken from the excellent innovation and utilisation within the commercial operators market sector, and which has led to extremely compelling improvements in UAV technology to the benefit of all market sectors, not least the emergency services.

Commonly used platforms tend to include the DJI Inspire 1, which has an excellent range of sensors (cameras) including good quality thermal and zoom sensors. Yuneec provides the very affordable Typhoon H with both good quality 4k/HD camera and basic thermal capability, but at a price point well below the DJI Inspire. Then the sector generally jumps to the Aeryon Sky Ranger, which tolerates much harsher weather conditions, provides longer flight times and provides a range of quality daylight and thermal integrated sensors, but at a cost that reflects its military sector background.

This traditional approach does tend to sit around the quadcopter (four motors/rotors) methodology, with the exception of the Yuneec range of hexacopters that provide a degree of redundancy that a quadcopter traditionally cannot offer should a motor or prop fail mid-flight. 

The last year or so has seen great steps when it comes to UAV innovation – companies like DJI being able to produce a platform like the Mavic which has an amazing specification for its size and, while not necessarily suited to the emergency services sector (though you’d be quite blinkered if you dismissed it from every scenario), does highlight how quickly technology advances and how sectors such as the emergency services need to be receptive to this technology and consider different options.

UAVs fit into two main categories (multirotor and fixed-wing) and each of these is split into two main weight categories (0-7 kg and 7-20 kg). Most emergency services use a multirotor in the 0-7 kg category, mainly because it allows them to be operated in controlled airspace without the requirement to gain permission from the controlling air traffic centre, although good practice is to advise the ATC of the deployment. In addition, sub-7 kg allows deployment within congested areas (50 m from vehicles, vessels and property not under control).

Fixed-wing UAVs offer much greater flight duration, can carry greater payloads, have obvious redundancy that a multirotor can’t offer and prove very useful in large-area search deployments. Developments for hybrid platforms allow the advantages a multirotor provides, such as vertical take-off/landing and the ability to hover if required, but also provide long flight duration along with loiter modes that allow them to circle a particular point for very long periods of time.

Looking at the available multirotor platforms, we have selected six that offer different opportunities to the emergency services, all multirotor and below 7 kg, with approximate prices in UK pounds.

DJI Inspire 1 or 2

The inspire has been around for a couple of years now, which in UAV terms is an eternity. A number of iterations of the Inspire 1 were released, followed by the  Inspire 2 in early 2017. The Inspire 1, in its most basic format, can be purchased for £1,800, but this rapidly increases towards £13,000 by the time a thermal camera has been added to the daylight camera, and spare batteries and associated equipment have been added. The Inspire 2 offers longer flight times (up to 27 minutes), much higher flight speeds, intelligent obstacle avoidance and higher quality optical/thermal sensors. By the time an Inspire 2 has been equipped with spare batteries, quality daylight and thermal sensors and so on, £15,000 will be easily spent.

Yuneec Typhoon H (or H520)

The Yuneec Typhoon H was released to the UK market in June 2016 offering an immediate degree of redundancy not seen with the current ready-to-fly products, in addition to the ability to have a separate camera operator using a second controller. The full three-axis gimbal at this price point was extremely impressive. 

The Typhoon H offers similar flight times to the DJI Inspire 1 while at a similar price point the Phantom 3 and the Phantom 4. The H520 is due for release imminently. While prices have not been released, it’s expected to compete directly with the DJI Inspire 2, but be aimed at the industrial end of the commercial spectrum, which could be good news for the emergency services as it will be offered with a superior range of sensors, both thermal and video, compared to the Typhoon H.  

Aeryon SkyRanger

Considered the ultimate platform by some emergency services, the SkyRanger offers a solution for most needs, can operate in heavy wind and rain, boasts high-quality optics (30x optical zoom/60x digital zoom) and offers advanced thermal capability. A genuine military sector product which has obvious benefits in the emergency services sector and, until recently, limited obvious market competion. The price is in the range of £55k.