Workshops
International Conference on Image Processing and Robotics

Human life sign detection from drone video

Asanka Perera
Postdoctoral Researcher and Robotics & Autonomous Systems Lab Manager
UNSW Canberra

In search and rescue operations, it is crucial to rapidly distinguish between those who are alive and those who are not. With this information, emergency teams can prioritize their operations to save more lives. However, in some natural disasters, people may be lying on the ground, covered with dust, debris, or ashes, making them difficult to detect through video analysis tuned to human shapes. We have introduced a technology that estimates the locations of people from aerial videos using image and signal processing designed to detect breathing movements. Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of this method in detecting both clearly visible people and those who are fully occluded by debris.