Towards Autonomous Networks of Drones for Maritime Search-and-Rescue Operations
| Componente | Categoria |
|---|---|
| Gaia Maselli | Aggiungi Tutor di riferimento (Professore o Ricercatore afferente allo stesso Dipartimento del Proponente) |
The earth's surface comprises 70% water, with a market value of coastal resources estimated around 3 Trillion USD for year. Coastal and marine ecosystems play a vital role for life on Earth, and they are central to a vast range of industries and people activities. Therefore, disaster detection, cost surveillance, as well as environmental data gathering are key activities at sea for countries and authorities.
However, monitoring activities are hampered by the vastness of the area, and by the inherently hostile and harsh environment. Current systems fail short in providing an accurate view of present situations due to the impossibility of covering the whole area, the technology limitations in gathering detailed data, and limited personnel and equipment.
Novel solutions exploit satellite technologies to gather images and monitor the coastal area, providing however low accuracy (i.e., low-resolution data with huge delays). Differently from these solutions, this project proposes squads of drones (DroNets) to autonomously coordinate in maritime environments. While DroNets are increasingly used for monitoring and patrolling onshore fields, we aim at exploiting them to support existing coastal and port surveillance systems. Squads of Drones are scalable, fast, and resilient, proving the perfect tool in maritime monitoring systems.