Design og utvikling av søk- og redningsdrone

Abstract

This thesis is written as part of the Master’s program in Product Design at Oslo and Akershus Uni- versity College in spring 2016. The thesis investigates the design and development of a rescue drone / UAV (Unmanned aerial vehicle), which purpose is to rapidly and autonomously be deployed to search for avalanche and shipwreck victims, primarily on the sea or in the mountains, but also in various disaster areas to map where people in emergencies are situated. The goal was to come up with a design that helps to reduce the response time it takes to find ava- lanche victims and thus increase the chance of saving lives. Such a project can have many different perspectives, be it a focus on logistics, ethics, philosop- hy or other aspects one can focus on. Based on the findings I have made through my research phase, I have chosen to work with design and development of the aircraft (the drone itself). Since there currently exists none or few drones designed specifically for this job, there is enormous potential for improvement related to such machines. The paper concludes that a rescue drone can notreplace rescue helicopters as the situation is today, but that they will eminently serve as a good complement to the current rescue vessels, both in terms of capacity but also by introducing new and modern technologies. We see that the development of UAVs occurs rapidly, and that the future what flying machines are concerned, is increasingly moving towards unmanned vehicles.