BACKGROUND In the European Alps emergency medical helicopter services are regularly involved in avalanche rescue missions. How the helicopter emergency medical system best supports avalanche rescue missions is controversial. AIM OF THE STUDY To study advantages and limitations of the early dispatch of emergency medical helicopters after avalanche accidents. METHODS Data on rescue mission ch...

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents to represent helicopter pilots inside closed-loop simulations has been a significant focus of collaborative research activities between DSTO’s Air Operations Division (AOD) and the University of South Australia. CHOPPA (Combined Helicopter OPerations and Performance Analysis) is a MATLAB/Simulink based simulation framework developed by AOD which su...

In this study, we design an autonomous navigation, guidance and control system for a small electric helicopter. Only small, light‐weight, and inaccurate sensors can be used for the control of small helicopters because of the payload limitation. To overcome the problem of inaccurate sensors, a composite navigation system is designed. The designed navigation sys...

This paper presents a technique to accurately estimate the state of a robot helicopter using a combination of gyroscopes, accelerometers, inclinometers and GPS. Simulation results of state estimation of the helicopter are presented using Kalman ltering based on sensor modeling. The number of estimated states of helicopter is nine : three attitudes( ; ; ) from the gyroscopes, three accelerations...

A model-free "teaching by showing" methodology is developed to train a fuzzy-neural controller for an autonomous robot helicopter. The controller is generated and tuned using training data gathered while a teacher operates the helicopter. A hierarchical behavior-based control architecture is used, with each behavior implemented as a hybrid fuzzy logic controller (FLC) and general regression neu...

BACKGROUND Despite many studies addressing potential impact of helicopter transport on trauma mortality, debate as to the efficacy of air transport continues. METHODS This retrospective study combined trauma registry data from five urban Level I adult and pediatric centers. Logistic regression assessed effect of helicopter transport on mortality while adjusting for age, sex, transport year, r...

We present the design and implementation of an omnidirectional vision system used for sideways-looking sensing on an autonomous helicopter. To demonstrate the capabilities of the system, a visual servoing task was designed which required the helicopter to locate and move towards the centroid of a number of visual targets. Results are presented showing that the task was successfully completed by...

An artificial neural network (ANN) based helicopter identification system is proposed. The feature vectors are based on both the tonal and the broadband spectrum of the helicopter signal. ANN pattern classifiers are trained using various parametric spectral representation techniques. Specifically, linear prediction, reflection coefficients, cepstrum, and line spectral frequencies (LSF) are comp...

Electrical companies routinely inspect their overhead lines by helicopter. Current detailed aerial inspection approach uses trained inspectors who fly aboard helicopters to inspect the lines with binoculars and cameras, while recording the data in a logbook. The procedure is performed while the helicopter hovers over and around power lines and structures, creating an element of danger for the p...

We present the design and implementation of a realtime, vision-based landing algorithm for an autonomous helicopter. The helicopter is required to navigate from an initial position to a final position in a partially known environment based on GPS and vision, locate a landing target (a helipad of a known shape) and land on it. We use vision for precise target detection and recognition. The helic...