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DronAID : A Smart Human Detection Drone for Rescue

Conference Paper · October 2018

DOI: 10.1109/HONET.2018.8551326

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 DronAID
A Smart Human Detection Drone for Rescue
Rameesha Tariq1, Maham Rahim2, Nimra Aslam3, Narmeen Bawany4, Ummay Faseeha5
Computer Science and Information Technology
Jinnah University For Women
Karachi, Pakistan.

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],

[email protected].

Abstract— Natural calamities have recently opened their Rescue teams in such situations are unable to reach
doors to disasters which in turn have affected various regions certain sensitive areas due to the immense amount of debris.
of the world. Disasters serve as an eye-opener as they are It becomes impossible for them to rescue people as they are
unstoppable and exceptional events which are either natural or unable to reach such areas. On the other hand, some existing
manmade, such as earthquakes, wildfires, floods and terrorist
systems that are controlled by robots are ineffective,
attacks etc. These natural catastrophes many a times serve as a
hats down chink in the armor as they lead to a massive death because due to earthquake or any other disastrous condition,
toll either because of people being stuck in the debris or due to humans get stuck underneath the debris which makes it
no help received on time. One of the major challenges faced by difficult for the robots to walk over broken and ruined
the rescue and search teams during a massive disaster is the buildings [2].
actual search of survivors and victims at the earliest and also
reaching out to far off areas to make sure people are not stuck Due to all these problems, enforcement of a tailor made
under the debris. This paper presents a real time autonomous rescue framework is of prime importance. The proposal of
drone technology system named “DronAID” that is capable of DronAID has therefore been laid down in the light of all the
detecting humans in disastrous conditions. This system assists
issues. It is designed using drone which will enable it to
in the rescue process by identifying the exact location of the
survivors at the earliest. As the system is a drone based system,
overcome many of the disastrous problems. The system is
it can easily be mobilized and controlled. This system capable of saving the lives of victims in real time.
comprises of a monitoring system along with a camera module
and sensor unit to identify the existence of humans buried DronAID rescue system will work efficiently in
under the debris. The system sends the data ahead for further searching people trapped under the rubble and marking their
action and investigation. We believe DronAID system is the locations as well as sending alerts, so that rescue teams can
need of the time and will prove to be a blessing in disguise in come in and aid those in need of assistance. The system
calamitous situations and will serve as a significant gathers real time data day and night in challenging
requirement in urban disasters.
conditions and without any risk to personnel. It captures
Keywords—disaster; debris; drone; security; survivors; PIR images and sends it further for monitoring the affected area.
sensor; victims; catastrophy; calamity. The system has Passive Infrared Sensors (PIR) to detect
radiations generated by human body [3].
I. INTRODUCTION
The contribution of this paper can be summarized as:
In disastrous situations like wars, tornados or
earthquakes, one of the major challenges for the rescue and • DronAID drone can be used at the time of natural
search teams is locating and finding survivors and victims at calamities to save the lives of humans for rescue
the earliest [1]. However, in these cases rescue teams fail to purposes.
sense the actual status of the life beneath the debris which • This system is also useful for monitoring the
finally leads to death. Moreover, disasters lead to such a affected area.
devastating effect on the body which makes it further more • This system can also provide aid to humans in
difficult to differentiate between a human and material. This areas where rescue teams cannot reach.
leads to a massive amount of people losing their lives; an
uncontrollable situation. We have divided our paper in various sections. In the
first section we have discussed related working of other
existing systems. In the second section we have presented
our proposed system and its working. Additionally, the indicate user via a signal. As it is a remote controlled robot
paper précises the application of the system and finally the it can easily be controlled and mobilized. This can be also
conclusion. utilized to detect thieves and terrorists.

II. RELATED WORK Mobile Rescue Robot for Human Body Detection in
Rescue Operation of Disaster[7] project proposes a rescue
Disasters produce a devastating effect which makes it robot which moves in earthquakes, disasters prone area to
very difficult to distinguish a human from a material. This help in detecting injured people, living people, their location
leads to a great loss of lives. and other rescue operations. Hence due to timely detection
of people in natural disasters this system can rescue
Many systems have been designed to solve this problem. precious lives and reduce the percentage of a massive loss
Live Human Detection Robot[4] is an embedded system along with less percentage of rescue operations. The
having a set of well-defined sensors which includes proposed system comprises of a mobile rescue robot and a
temperature, PIR, Ultra sonic, IR, vibration detector and PC controlled module.
more sensors that indicates the system about the status of
the human body. An alert message is sent to the control Whereas DronAID system is designed on Drone that makes
rooms of affected areas using GSM technology to give the rescue operations efficient. The system has PIR sensor
immediate rescue to the victims using PLC logical technology to detect radiations generated by human body.
programming [5]. The system sends location of the victims to the rescue
teams, so that the rescue teams can locate the victims at the
Wireless Human Detection Robot [6] deals with the earliest. It captures images and send further for monitoring
live human detection. It is a remote controlled robot that the effective area.
utilizes PIR sensors to detect the existence of humans and

Table I. Comparison of Existing systems and DronAID system.

Projects Features

Human Live Sending Location Image Image Processing

Detection Streaming of victims Capturing

Live Human Detection Robot ✔ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌

Wireless Human Detection ✔ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌

Robot

Mobile Rescue Robot for ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ ❌

Human Body Detection in
Rescue Operation of Disaster

DronAID ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
 Fig. 1. Work Flow Diagram of DronAID System

III. DRONAID SYSTEM A. CONTROLLER MODULE

DronAID system is designed on Drone that makes the
rescue operations much more efficient. The system has a The ATmega2560 is used to design the System of
PIR sensor technology to detect radiations generated by DronAID. Following functions are performed by the
human body. The system sends the location of the victims to microcontroller in the system:
the rescue teams, so that the rescue teams can locate the
victims at the earliest and rescue them in real time. • Receive the signals from the sensors and process
them.
• Send signals to the database.

B. MONITORING MODULE

The core part of the system is the PIR sensor. The

system functions on the infrared radiations that are emitted
from a human body. Infrared radiation (IR) has a
wavelength of 0.7 to 300 micrometers.

Humans emit infrared radiations. It has been

assimilated that a human body radiates IR at a wavelength
of 10 micrometers to 12 micrometer [8]. PIR sensor is a
Fig. 2. DronAID System Modules passive electronic device that detects motion by sensing an
infrared fluctuation [9]. It consists of three pins (drain, gate
The hardware components of this system are and source). A high signal is redirected to alert the pin when
microcontroller (ATmega2560), PIR sensor, Wi-Fi module, the PIR detects an IR radiation [10].
camera (OV7670) and SD Card. Android Studio and
Arduino IDE are the software tools used to design the This module is accountable for detecting human
system. position in the disastrous conditions like earthquake and
sending those signals to the microcontroller in order to
The DronAID system consists of various modules which
notify the rescue teams about the location of the victim [11].
includes; microcontroller module, sensor module, data
This module consists of a PIR sensor for detecting humans
storage module, Wi-Fi module and camera module. Each
by the infrared radiations that are emitted via the human
module working is discussed in detail below.
body.
 Fig. 3. Passive infared sensor working

Fig. 4. Simulation of Microcontroller.

C. COMMUNICATION MODULE victim’s exact location. It also captures the images of the
affected area and send data for further processing.
This module consists of a WI-FI and is accountable for
the communication between the application and the server. E. STORAGE MODULE
If communication between the server and application is not
The images of the affected area are stored on a server
established, live streaming will be constrained from
that are sent further for processing. Admin can request
travelling from the server. more pictures of an incident for further processing and
D. CAPTURING MODULE investigations. Furthermore, personal information of
security teams are also stored in the database.
This module consists of a camera. The camera sends live
video streaming of the affected area and helps locate the
 IV. SYSTEM DEPLOYMENT 214, no. 1, pp. 481–518, 2012.

The proposed system is tested and implemented to suit [3] S. Ramesh and P. S. Yuvaraj, “Improved Response
the desired problem and its solution. Figure 5 shows the Time on Safety Mechansim Based on PIR sensor,”
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[5] J. Shapiro, “Smart cities: quality of life,
DronAID system has the ability to achieve high
productivity, and the growth effects of human
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[7] T. B. Bhondve, P. R. Satyanarayan, and P. M.

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Fig. 5. Aerial View of a Collapsed building.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT [11] a Zanella, N. Bui, a Castellani, L. Vangelista, and

M. Zorzi, “Internet of Things for Smart Cities,”
This research is supported by Ignite - National IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, pp.
Technology Fund, Pakistan. 22–32, 2014.

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