For six years Gene Robinson has been building UAS and using them to help dozens of public safety agencies across Texas, in search, rescue and recovery missions, and also helping fight wildfires.
The four-pound UAS called Spectra roams the sky and scours the earth. It climbs hundreds of feet, can wander miles from the command truck and search one square mile in 10 minutes.
Spectra was first called in by the Hays County Sheriff’s Department in 2005 to help in the ultimately tragic search for Margaret White, a Wimberley woman who was 58 when she went missing. Spectra has recovered eight bodies over the years and perhaps saved lives in the search process. Robinson credits the sophisticated digital pictures and video the drone captures. “We started adding better and better cameras, then streaming video. Talk about a bird’s-eye view!” he said.
Spectra also helps map wildfires. “The commanders see we’ve got a fire front approaching, threatening structures, send trucks over there. We’ve been on several occasions like that and it’s very gratifying,” Robinson said.
Robinson is now working with two universities to develop software that can more quickly and thoroughly examine the visual data the drones send down.
Source: Austin News