Unmanned Maritime System For Search and Rescue: As Soon As 2016
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The name Icarus is the name of a character from the greek mythology. Icarus was a rash boy who didn’t heed his father’s warnings, fell to the sea and died. Since then, the tale of Icarus serves as warning to people lest they become adventurers who take needless risks.
Inspired by mythology, the name ICARUS was given by NATO’s Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) to an unmanned maritime system project to aid in rescue missions. At the beginning of July the 24 project’s partners, coming from nine different states, presented the ICARUS system (Integrated Components for Assisted Rescue and Unmanned Search operations) in a final step of the project, which was funded by the European Commision.
As early as 2012, significant efforts were put in developing advanced robotic platforms that could aid crisis management teams in search and rescue missions on land and maritime disaster scenarios. CMRE has played a significant rold in developing the maritime component of the project with an emphasis on the system’s autonomy and enhanced integration between UAV and USV (Unmanned Sailing Vehicle).
Search and Rescue (SAR) unmanned vehicles offer important support to rescue missions teams. They are especially significant in maritime incidents, where survival time is short and the SAR teams are facing risks to their lives.
During ICARUS’s last event the project partners presented the system’s efficiency in case of a maritime accident. “Let’s say that a passenger ship strands or drowns in high sea, but the atmospherical and maritime conditions do not allow the search and rescue teams to perform the victims’ rescue operations in safety”, said one of the researchers. “One solution would be to use autonomous robots that can help these teams in catastrophic situations”.
The event’s exhibition included USVs and UAVs, linked together in a joint network which increases cooperation between them. CMRE’s autonomous smart vehicles were combined into a USV and now this unmanned boat can operate autonomously in search and rescue missions in deep sea, with minial human supervision.
The world’s countries will no doubt be standing in line to get this technology and the first to display interest were the Portugese navy and the Belgian first aid team B-FAST. Most importantly, this is not some futuristic concept – the system will be ready for operation as soon as 2016, when the ICARUS project will be officialy over.
