Ulsan Fire Department Begins Development of AI-Based Drone Rescue and Search System

Selected for 'Inter-Ministerial Collaboration-Based AI Expansion Project'

Integration of AI and Drones Applied to Life-Saving Operations

The Ulsan Fire Department is launching the nation’s first AI-based drone rescue and search system.

The Ulsan Fire Department has been selected for the “2024 Ministry Collaboration-Based AI Expansion Project,” hosted by the National Fire Agency and the Ministry of Science and ICT. As a result, it has secured 4.5 billion KRW in government funding to build the system.

The role of drones, a core sector of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is gradually expanding. In particular, they are being deployed at fire and rescue sites, achieving significant results such as locating missing persons.

Last June, the Ulsan Fire Department signed a business agreement with the National IT Industry Promotion Agency and companies with AI technology to develop and verify an AI solution, officially starting system development until 2026.

This year, the project will focus on collecting training data and building infrastructure, developing an initial AI solution model for mountainous areas.

Next year, the target areas will gradually expand to waterfronts and urban areas, and in the final year of 2026, the AI solution will be further advanced and applied to disaster sites in Ulsan.

Once development is complete, the first benefit will be the automatic detection of people in need through real-time drone video analysis. This will reduce the burden on field personnel who previously had to visually confirm with their own eyes, and also enable identification of people who may be difficult to spot with the naked eye.

In reality, missing persons in mountainous areas are sometimes not found because parts of their bodies are hidden by dense branches or rocks. However, AI-based drones, pre-trained on numerous similar cases, can analyze transmitted drone footage to overcome these challenges.

Secondly, the system will recommend optimal drone search routes for locating missing persons. Moving beyond the traditional method of relying on the experience of field personnel to select drone search areas, the system will recommend scientific search routes by integrating and analyzing data such as actual mountain terrain, climate, and past accident records. This can not only shorten the time needed to find missing persons, but also assist field personnel in making decisions.

Finally, the AI-based drone will perform autonomous flights. Once a search route is designated, the AI drone will automatically take off, detect missing persons along the specified route, and, even if communication is lost, continue its mission using autonomous positioning before returning to the landing point.

Lee Jaesoon, head of the Ulsan Fire Department, said, “As the nation’s first project to combine core Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies?AI and drones?for rescue and search, we will work quickly to succeed and deploy drones to solve the challenges of searching wide areas in mountain or water-related accidents.”