We currently live in a world where technology predominates and advances very quickly, developing applications and devices that help us in daily life to improve our lives and solve everyday problems. One of these technologies that are in full development and evolution are the Drones, or also called RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System). These systems are unmanned aerial vehicles that offer us infinity applications to cover these needs and problems that we have on a daily basis. On the other hand, another technology that is in full development and that has been seen to have great potential for developing applications is Artificial Intelligence (AI). To quickly define AI, we say that it is the intelligence that humans develop with body, brain and mind but expressed by a machine, processor and software. Thanks to the fact that Drones can fly over places where humans cannot reach, through their cameras we can see what is in those areas, so one of the most useful applications in Drones is Search and Rescue operations. The main focus of this project is to merge RPAS with AI to develope a Search and Rescue application. For this, an executable software has been created for any computer, which will allow to detect people lost in the forest or other places, through a video, either through a Streaming on Youtube or a video saved locally, allowing detection both in real time as well as in deferred time, making the detection done by the machine and the human being able to do other functions while the search is done with the Drone. The objective is to use both, the thermal and visual cameras of a Drone, to record a video or stream the image and send it to the software so that, through Artificial Intelligence, if it finds a person, it detects the human and an alarm sounds. The software has been developed in Python, an open source, cross-platform programming language that can be used for web development, software creation, and data processing. This language is truly useful since it is one of the most used in the world of programming, thus there are multiple libraries, as OpenCV, created by open source users that have allowed the development of this human detection software. To develop the program, it has been necessary to train the machine with images of people. These images have been obtained with real flights in the area of Collserola, Barcelona. This area is close to the airport of Barcelona El Prat, so permissions and coordination are needed to be able to fly completely legally. For this reason, this project has also included all the documentation and legal part necessary to be able to fly in the Barcelona area.
