All field trials as PDF:
Östersund, Sweden
May 2010
HEPKIE Team:
ResQU personnel, helicopter and pilot from Osterman Helicopter AB
Participants:
Swedish Police, Swedish Mountain Rescue Service, The Norwegian rescue helicopter unit Skvadron 330
The antennas mounted on the helicopter landing skid
Set-up
The helicopter based search unit prototype with new adapted antennas and a new visual search interface was tested. The purpose was to verify functionality from a helicopter point of view, how the specific platform and situation interferes with antenna geometry, possible radio disturbances and how the pilot interacted with the interface. Also the participants filled out a questionnaire to give end user feedback and recommendations.
Experimental audio-visual interface on a small laptop
The test
The search object, a person with a test phone, sat in a car about 20km away from the Osterman helicopter launch pad. In these tests we were focusing on testing the helicopter mounted Search Unit (no Base Unit was used) so the phone to be searched was already known and registered in the system.
Results
Unfortunately we had poor weather with heavy rain and very low clouds which made it impossible to reach higher altitudes. Despite that, we could still localize the phone from a distance of 20km within 15 minutes from helicopter launch to visual contact with the search object.
End user recommendations
The participants expressed a great need for the HEPKIE system.
HEPKIE should have/be:
- maximum range of at least 20-30km
- light weight unit for short range (<10km)
- less than 5 minutes to mount antennas and equip a helicopter
- the helicopter based system should be combined with hand held search units on the ground
- easy to use
Video
(in Swedish)
