ROLFER: An Innovative Proactive Platform to Reserve Swimmer’s Safety

The major problem of an emergency situation is the immediate reaction and the rescue assistance when people call for help. The response time is a vital factor in search and rescue (SAR) operations, owed to the fact that potential delays may have dramatic and even lethal results. Moreover, the safety of rescue workers is another major issue and must be ensured in any circumstance. SAR operations can greatly benefit from the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to reduce the time to detect the victim and provide him/her invaluable assistance. UAVs are nimble, quick-moving and can be easily programmed to exhibit autonomous behaviors. Thus, they are able to operate in difficult environments and under circumstances onerous for humans to cope with. This paper presents ROLFER (RObotic Lifeguard For Emergency Rescue), a completely autonomous robotic aerial system for immediate provision of rescue and life-saving services, which does not require human-in-the-loop for its navigation. It aims to provide fast reaction in case of an emergency under adverse environmental conditions. ROLFER is currently studied within the framework of the specific use case to provide one or more auto-inflatable floats to a distressed swimmer, thus, significantly diminishing the response time until the arrival of rescue workers. ROLFER’s architecture and its elements are introduced in detail here; these include the drone and the airborne equipment, the communication link with the base station, the controlling computer and its related software as well as the wearable equipment carried by the people to be supervised and the related software developed. The purpose of the proposed system is to enhance SAR teams operational capabilities in emergency situations in aquatic environment with adverse weather and sea conditions.