Investigation of low-cost drone hardware for search and rescue operations
Innovative Irish company
Squadron Six Aerospace engaged with the IMaR Technology Gateway with financial assistance from the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Voucher programme to carry out a strategic technology selection project.
After Squadron Six Aerospace completed market research they saw a gap in the market for Search And Rescue (SAR) tasks assisted by drone swarms. In their primary research to test the hypothesis “Will a swarm of drones out preform a single drone in SAR tasks?” Casualty detection times of a single drone compared to a swarm of drones gave a 64% time saving in favour of a swarm of drones. Hypothesis testing was carried out in a synthetic environment over an area of 55 acres of agricultural land.
Innovation process
“As MD of Squadron Six Aerospace and as a volunteer in the Civil Defence I have been on many river-side searches and I can assure you that every minute saved in an emergency situation can mean the difference between life and death!” – Kevin Doyle, MD.
Squadron Six Aerospace are interested to identify suitable commercial off the shelf flight controller systems which can add additional computing/calculation capabilities and manage and deliver streams of commands to multiple drones using a single ground control station.
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Irish company
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detailed report
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Innovation Voucher
“The strategic solution that the IMaR Technology Gateway presented to Squadron Six Aerospace has enabled the company to build a significant body of knowledge that is now being realised in their test lab in the form of their drone swarm solution called “Drone Team Six”. In 2019 “Drone Team Six” was selected for second place in the global Galileo Masters GNSS special prize category sponsored by the German Ministry for Transport and Digital Infrastructure.”
Kevin Doyle
MD, Squadron Six Aerospace Limited
The Squadron Six Aerospace & IMAR Technology Gateway partnership
IMaR provided a detailed state-of-the-art report to Squadron Six Aerospace around the available commercial drone solutions & configurable hardware to develop a custom drone. The configurable hardware was acquired, basic testing with the ground control software was performed and bi-directional communication was demonstrated. Squadron Six Aerospace gained valuable knowledge and expertise in drone control technology.