Audio-Based Search and Rescue with a Drone: Highlights from the IEEE Signal Processing Cup 2019 Student Competition [SP Competitions]

Increasing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as drones, has occurred in recent years. Search and rescue scenarios where humans in emergency situations need to be quickly found in difficult-to-access areas constitute an important field of application for this technology. Drones have already been used by humanitarian organizations in countries such as Haiti and the Philippines to map areas after a natural disaster using high-resolution embedded cameras, as documented in a recent United Nations report. Although research efforts have focused mostly on developing video-based solutions for this task, UAV-embedded audio-based localization has received relatively less attention. However, UAVs equipped with a microphone array could be of critical help to localize people in emergency situations, especially when video sensors are limited by a lack of visual feedback due to bad lighting conditions (such as at night or in fog) or obstacles limiting the field of view.