Handheld search and rescue sensor uses IoT, smartphone
The mobile TigerStrike Lite platform uses the company’s Intelligent Radio Direction Finding (iRDF) technology to read three different types of distress signals: personal locator beacons (PLBs), emergency locator transmitters (ELTs), and the emergency position indicating radio beacons (EPIRBs) used in maritime applications. To find a signal’s location, the TigerStrike Lite device takes a single vector reading from two fixed locations, enabling it to pinpoint a signal to within an accuracy of five degrees, the company says.
The signal’s location can then be sent via an Android-based smartphone to the operational base of choice. Each vector is transmitted via Bluetooth to a smartphone equipped with the TigerStrike Lite app, which is physically mounted on top of the TigerStrike mobile unit.
Rescuers are provided with a sophisticated analysis, route, and ETA to the target area. This represents the first time, says the company, that search and rescue has used both the power of smartphones and the connectivity of IoT to such potential life-saving effect.
“As the culmination of the needs of generations of search and rescue teams all over the world, the TigerStrike Lite will reinvent how future search and rescue operations are conducted,” says Firestorm UAV founder Murray Craig. “Instead of just looking for people or crash sites, we’ve created a portable and affordable device that actively hunts for the radio signals emitted by PLBs, ELTs, and EPIRBs. And that is the critical difference between finding people in enough time to save their lives, and finding them days later when it’s too late.”
TigerStrike Lite combines advanced GPS applications and signal processing to bring pinpoint precision to an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) market that, says the company, has previously been financially out of reach for average, hometown search and rescue operations. Until now, field beacon readers could cost tens of thousands of dollars, while TigerStrike Lite packages cost around $2,495.
TigerStrike technology has been successfully tested by the United States Navy in a trial SEAL recovery operation under a UAV. This was the first successful demonstration of a UAV-based radio direction finding system, the company says.
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