Douglas Melvin

ARIES

ARIES is a small, man-portable, UAV system in which an operator carries the drone into the field and deploys it, perhaps, to aid in the search for lost hikers. The operator will rely on the drone to alert him/her to the presence of objects identified on the ground and recall for the operator any explanatory data from a database of predetermined objects. ARIES utilizes a commercially available remote-controlled quadcopter mounted with two cameras and a remote-control system. The remote-control system is, itself, composed of three major sub-components. The hardware can be either an android device with accelerometers, or a laptop with a joystick used to exercise physical control over the drone by way of software. The software involves the other two sub-components of the remote system. The control software is the interface between the user, the device, and the drone. It is a basic flight control system that gives the user a video feed of what the drone sees through its cameras. There is also a back-end software component that compares images that stream in from the drone to a predetermined database of known objects as well as data on them. A notification, including known data, will display on-screen for the operator should any objects from the database appear in the environment. The signal strength data from the WiFi transmitter/receiver can be used to approximate the location of the drone, or in more advance hardware, a GPS antenna may be used to more accurately pinpoint the location of an object in the environment. ARIES is an important step forward for UAV technology, and VTUAV craft , because  it makes them accessible to smaller local agencies with limited budgets for equipment and training, and it also will allow for local law enforcement to easily train civilian volunteer rescue teams in the use of the equipment without sacrificing vital time required to locate hikers before they succumb to the environment or perhaps recover evidence before it is contaminated or lost.