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I would think that IR sensors would be a natural choice, more for ‘lost child’ or ‘injured hiker’ than for the simpler ‘lost hiker’ scenario. One of the SAR

I would think that IR sensors would be a natural choice, more for ‘lost child’ or ‘injured hiker’ than for the simpler ‘lost hiker’ scenario. One of the SAR challenges for lost children is that they might too frightened to leap up and wave their arms at searchers, either human or robotic. Calling a lost child by name helps, but IR seems like a natural choice - is there a weight, battery, or cost downside?

thaumaturgy 8y ago
Eh, the bigger problem with lost children is their habit of hiding or wandering back into cleared areas. Fortunately, they don't tend to wander far. Lost Person Behavior guidebook puts a 4-6 year old child at a 95% range of 5.1 miles in dry territory. That doesn't change dramatically until you start approaching teenage ages. I've posted a few criticisms of IR already in this thread. There are a narrow range of environments where it's helpful, and there's a tradeoff between image quality and flight time -- you can have good flight time and terrible image quality, or good image quality and terrible flight time.