Dispelling Drone Myths: Drones really can save lives!
David: Hey everybody, thanks for checking out the Aerial Influence channel. I'm David Plummer. This is Michael Ferguson. All we do is talk about drones all day long. Today in episode number four of our series Dispelling Drone Myths, we want to talk about how drones are really saving people's lives. I feel like you hear a story just about every day about somebody whose life was saved with a drone, and I think we've seen that personally with some of our clients.
Michael: Yeah. And I think what people also want to hear is a little bit deeper as far as how was the traditional ground crew used in conjunction with the drone. And you've got a good story for this.
David: Yeah. So a few months ago we were working with our clients, the Elgin Police Department. The Elgin Police Department is one of the leading departments, definitely in the Midwest, for using drones for search and rescue and for accident reconstruction. They've been great clients of ours, great friends, and one of the things that they did with their Matrice 210 that they purchased from us is a great example. There was someone that had gone missing. It was a man. He was a diabetic and was going into diabetic shock. His family told the police what was going on. So imagine that, imagine your family member is out in the middle of the woods somewhere. Last place they saw them was at a forest preserve someplace, he hadn't been seen for 12 hours. The helplessness you would feel in that situation would be pretty awful.
So police went out, they had a traditional ground crew on the ground, and then the drone arrived. The people on the ground were looking for the guy. They couldn't find him. They could hear a noise off in the distance somewhere or was relatively nearby, but they could not tell what the actual noise was and they could not locate where it was. The drone went up in the air, and within a couple of minutes they had a heat signature that what they were looking for was right there, within yards of the police. And they were actually able to save the man's life. So this was a great story. Even though we weren't the ones out there saving anybody's life, it makes us feel great because...
Michael:...it was used for good and, and it turned out to be highly beneficial. The other thing too that I thought was interesting is that it was a wooded area. There were trees knocked over and it was hard to navigate. I mean, from the air, it looks like it's a straight shot, but it's not really, and what this allowed them to do was obviously, okay, we have the heat signature. They were able to check it out. It was great. Then they were able to fly the drone back to where they had pulled an ambulance up. So it was almost like the Northern Star, you know? It kind of led them out of the woods. That is also a time saver.
David: It’s not only saving the lives of victims, you know, someone that is lost or a house fire or something like that, but it's also saving the lives of these first responders. Instead of having to go into a dangerous situation, they can send a drone in first to check the situation out. I mean we just worked with the Elgin Police Department SWAT team sending in small drones, indoors, to basically be the eyes of these officers before they ever have to put themselves into any sort of danger. So it's really incredible and it's one of the things I think that keeps us going and keeps us passionate about this is you're really seeing tangible ways. There is no better way to show the value of something than its ability to save lives. I think that's where we're at right now. People are starting to see that these are not just fun toys. It's a tool that can be deployed and repeated and repeatable in the fact that it can save lives.
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Michael: As always, thank you for reading. We're excited to share the future of drones with you.