“We’re making an autonomous search and rescue drone for ski slopes,” Adrian explained. With around 600,000 ski accidents each year, an eye in the sky could make a huge difference for ski patrols and volunteer rescue teams.
Adrian’s team plans to build a drone equipped with two cameras—one standard and one thermal. The standard camera will send data to a Raspberry Pi and Coral TPU from Google, which will use image recognition to identify potential accidents. When the onboard model detects something unusual, it will alert ski patrol, who can then verify the situation using the thermal camera feed.
Right now, the team has been gathering test equipment, motors, and flight controllers, as well as collecting the necessary datasets for image processing. But that’s only the start of their journey—Team 39 has also partnered with Killington Resort in Vermont to collect geographical data of the area. Using this data, they plan to divide the mountain into a search grid, allowing the drone to navigate the resort efficiently and enabling rescuers to track its location in real time.
The road ahead is long. Beyond building the drone itself, Adrian tells me that one of the biggest challenges will be coordinating the two different cameras and producing useful, reliable outputs.
But with the curiosity and grit that have carried them through their first three years of engineering school, Team 39 will no doubt take flight.
