Look, I’ll be honest: I went into this anticipating a legendary video of a badass drone tearing around the gorgeous, glowing blue guts of a glacier. It was not to be, however, the crevasse-exploring drone is still a crucial application of the whole drone principle, especially when it pertains to search and rescue.
Crevasses are one of a mountaineer’s – and individuals typically attracted to rescue them – most significant threats. Glaciers are riddled with deep, dark gorges, and they’re frequently invisible on the surface area due to snow-cover. In fact, entering a crevasse to check out is itself an unsafe and uphill struggle that requires unique skills and devices. Effectively searching a crevasse network for a lost climber is extremely difficult, akin to working your way through a deadly maze.
So, it’s pretty obvious why drones would be useful for glacier search and rescue, but it’s surprising how little we’ve seen this so far.
The video is of a current partnership in between a mountain rescue team operating on Zermatt Glacier and Flyability, a drone start-up with origins at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The bumping around is really part of the mission’s success, as the round cage is designed to enable rather imprecise non-pilot flying abilities, as you ‘d expect on an SAR group.
A Flyability press release describes: “With its round, easily turning protective cage, the drone stays completely stable after contacts, making it totally collision-tolerant and safe to fly near human beings. It was hence capable to quickly access this extreme environment while being from another location operated by an inexperienced pilot. The ingrained complete HD video camera, digital live video transmission and the effective lighting system enabled the drone to run in the heart of the mountain glacier, 10s of meters below the surface area.”.
As a climber, falling into a crevasse while alone on some mountain is still the stuff of nightmares, however, perhaps it will quickly be a bit less so.
