THE GRIFFISS MISSION
The Lockheed Martin fire/SAR ‘mission’ at Griffiss International Airport began with the lighting of a fire away from the airport’s runway area. Standing close (but not too close) to the fire was a ‘victim’; namely a participant waving his arms and looking for someone to rescue him.
The mission’s first stage belonged to the Indago quadcopter. “The Indago is ideal for quickly obtaining a bird’s- eye view of an incident scene,” said McMillen. “In the demonstration, the Indago was deployed to provide ‘first responders’ with a fast overview of the fire; to help them see what was happening and what was affected.”
With this data available, the demonstration team was able to launch the K-MAX to prepare for fire suppression water drops. As the K-MAX took off, the Indago searched for a nearby pond that could be used as a water source. Once the water drops began, the quadcopter was used by the K-MAX’s remote human operator to visually monitor how successful each drop was in knocking down the fire, as well as looking out for any ‘hot spots’ that might have popped up, also requiring attention. Using the Indago’s visual information, the K-MAX’s human operator
commanded the autonomously- flown helicopter to take off and head to the pond. Using its own sensor suite, the K-MAX dipped and filled the long-lined water bucket. It then flew to the site chosen by the remote operator and released its water load onto the fire. The K-MAX continued to conduct these suppression runs, as instructed by the remote operator, until the fire had been put out.
The Desert Hawk fixed-wing UAV had a different mission: Its goal was to find the person requiring evacuation from the ground. In an actual incident, the Desert Hawk has the staying power to provide long- term, situational awareness to remote human operators for both firefighting and SAR efforts. However, for the sake of the demo, the Desert Hawk focussed only on SAR, in this case, locating the missing victim so that SARA could be sent to rescue him.
Once the victim had been found, it was time for SARA to get involved. Using locational and terrain sensor information fed to it from the K-MAX – since both were equipped with MATRIX technology to enable inter- aircraft data communication – SARA headed to the rescue area. The helicopter’s onboard equipment then scanned the area for a safe landing zone. When this had been found, SARA managed its own descent. Once on the ground, the victim climbed inside and SARA carried him off to safety. This meant autonomously flying the S-76 to another part of the Griffiss airfield, identifying a remotely-specified landing area, and descending to the ground.
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