or helicopter and drone flight crews, the hardest part of any search and rescue (SAR) mission isn’t the flying—it’s the searching. Staring at grid lines while monitoring terrain and fighting fatigue can push human endurance to its limit. Now, the industry is fundamentally changing the equation by pairing crewed helicopters with uncrewed drones to share the workload.
Developed by the military, manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) is moving into civilian SAR and all-hazard emergency response.
By networking autonomous drones with crewed rotorcraft, manufacturers are tasking uncrewed systems with handling tedious search patterns and data gathering, freeing human crews in the helicopter to focus on physical rescues. Here is a look at how five major players are making “collaborative SAR” a reality.