David Binks

Automated Search Using Drones and MRMap:

David has been a member of Duddon & Furness MRT for 27 years and team leader for the last six. Over this time there have been significant developments in technology and he used his software engineering skills to begin the development of MRMap in 2007, initially for his own team to manage the location of team members. MRMap has developed over the years and was the obvious platform to incorporate the drone searching automation.

Personal experience with manual drone searching lead to the conclusion that it was of limited effectiveness. So, within the Lakes, we developed an automated system that was then integrated into MRMap and has proven to be extremely capable during testing. The process involves automatically generating legal and optimised flight paths to autonomously generate multiple, overlapping images that are then processed (without using AI) to identify potential targets. The system was proven when we assisted our colleagues in Glencoe to help locate a man who had been missing for five weeks. It’s ideal for steep, complicated and high-risk ground.