The development in autonomous Uncrewed Air Vehicles (UAVs) has been tremendous, but what about finding a good place to land? If one wants to deliver medical aid to a casualty in rugged terrain, say in a wooded or urban area, then finding a suitable landing spot close enough to them can be a real challenge for trained pilots, let alone an uncrewed UAV.

In collaboration with Cranfield University, BAE Systems has developed and tested a solution that’s proven to work in a number of scenarios.

How does it work then?

Developing artificial intelligence to find a good landing zone is challenging and requires a number of things to be done. The easy part is working out a flight path to the casualty’s last known location, but then one needs to follow a search pattern to find them, scan the ground to find a flat enough area that’s close to the person you want to help, then execute a safe landing. You also have to make sure you’re on the same level as the casualty—the landing can’t be on a flat roof next to the casualty! Again, the landing area has to be stable, and not comprise of loose rocks that might collapse under the weight of the landing vehicle.