Virtual assistance in disaster areas

On the 12th of January 2010, Haiti was hit by a major earthquake that reached seven on the Richter scale.

The capital city Port-au-Prince was hit particularly hard and was practically demolished. Already on January 13th, satellite images taken by GeoEye-1 were available on Google Earth. These pictures had been taken at a height of 681 kilometers and give a definite impression of the scale of devastation.

However, these images are not accurate enough to use for searching for missing persons or emergency rescue operations.

Sky-Watch is working on developing UAVs that are small enough to be sent into collapsed buildings carrying listening equipment and a thermal camera to look for persons trapped within the ruins.

A UAV would also be able to follow an operation commander from the air and search an area with a conventional as well as a thermal camera.