New technology is constantly revamping the way we do things. After all, these advancements are not a goal in and of themselves – they should always serve real, human needs.
One of the areas that are in grave need of technological advancements are search and rescue missions. Whether they’re conducted for civilian or military purposes, these missions often require a significant effort both in time and human resources.
What’s more, these missions are often time critical. If we look at a group of hikers lost in a mountainous, hardly accessible region, we realize that efforts to find them come down more to hope than a promise.
Fact is, search and rescue missions require significant participation of police officers, firefighters, special units, volunteers. Even then, success is not guaranteed.
What could be the solution?
Drone Swarms to the Rescue
Autonomous 5G drones are set to transform many industries and verticals. Emergency response drones are already well in development. These advancements could usher in a new way of conducting search and rescue missions.
With drone swarms equipped with 4K or 8K video cameras, search and rescue missions become faster, more cost-efficient, and generate a higher success rate.
Not only can drones cover more territory, faster, but they can go where humans can’t. Inaccessible terrain now becomes easy to survey and search.
Still, is it all as simple as deploying a drone swarm and letting it do its work? The human factor is always needed, and in this case, our role is purely managerial.
Edge Network and Real-Time Rescue
For drone swarms to achieve the desired effect, they need to be robust, secure and based on 5G technology (enabling low latency and high bandwidth).
If we want to see drone swarms significantly improve search and rescue missions, they need to operate in real-time.
What would make this possible? A natural combination of 5G technology and edge network infrastructure.
Today, 5G technology can enable rescuers to bring with them 5G radios with a small part of the 5G core (UPF) and an edge computing platform right to the scene.
This type of network solution enables fast deployment of the network and drone swarm. It also means that the swarm control is automatically done from the edge location. All streaming video is gathered and analyzed in real-time, right then and there.
In Conclusion
Combining 5G and edge computing yields the best results in terms of search and rescue missions. Edge infrastructure ensures that all critical work is done in real-time, right at the scene. 5G ensures there are no transmission delays and that everything can be viewed and analyzed automatically and continuously.
Therefore, 5G drone swarms supported with edge technology have the potential to save critical hours during search and rescue missions. And in these highly stressful, time-critical situations, a couple of hours means a difference between life and death.
Saguna is a pioneer in edge cloud computing, Contact us today to find out more.
