A.R.C Abstract

A.R.C Abstract

Chances of surviving an avalanche burial if located under fifteen minutes are 92%; These chances are diminished to 30% at thirty five minutes as victims begin to succumb to acute asphyxiation. Currently, avalanche fatalities have been steadily increasing with 324 fatal avalanches killing 440 people in the past 50 years. In the past 30 years, no technological advances in avalanche rescue have been made which have contributed to a decrease of the mortality rates of avalanches.

The goal of the A.R.C(Autonomous Rescue Companion) project is to invent a product which will lead to the decrease of deaths due to avalanche accidents. In order to reach this goal we are taking the approach of being able to locate the victim before rescue teams arrive, thus allowing rescue teams to retrieve the victim in a reduced time span. We are headed towards creating a drone which achieves this. The drone will be able to roughly locate the victim by receiving the signal from their emergency beacon if it is on the skier/hiker’s person. After the drone has approximated the location of the victim, it will then paint the area using an attached spray paint can to apprise the rescue teams of the location.

The final results of A.R.C should lead to a decrease in the rescue time of avalanche teams, thus making victims of avalanches have a greater chance of surviving the accident. This project should conclude with a theoretical decrease in the mortality rates of avalanches.

Flare progress

We have begun working on the design of the flare by first creating a prototype of where the LED's will be placed and will then make a 3d model of the case for the LED's. We are also working on the mechanism for dropping the flare.

New Method

Our new method for informing the rescue team on the victims locations is using a power flare. We will be making an LED flare based on the design of a power flare, (http://pfdistributioncenter.com/). The case for the flare will be 3d printed and inside will be high power LED's that will illuminate the snow and make it easy for the rescue team to find the victim. The flare will be delivered by the drone by a mechanism that will cause the drone to lower near the surface of the ground then drop the flare onto the snow.

Spray Can Update

To lower the amount of voltage needed to push down hard enough to activate the spray can, we attempted to change the type of can to see if it lowers voltage needed. We purchased a small spray can and a large spray can with a attachable trigger to make the can fire easier. When testing to see if the voltage needed to fire the spray can was reduced, the smaller spray can's voltage was not reduced and the attachable trigger did not make it easier to use the spray can. We are moving to a new plan to give the rescue plan the avalanche victims location