Officials from the Moore County sheriff’s office saved a missing 11-year-old with their recently purchased thermal police drone, reports ABC 11 Eyewitness News.
With a family worried about their missing daughter, the Moore County Sheriff’s office had just the tool they needed to start the search. With setup and deployment only taking minutes the thermal and zoom camera police drone quickly took flight. After scanning the area around the residence, the police picked up a thermal signature near a tree across the highway. Officials then went to the area and found the missing girl asleep under a tree.
Although she was found only about 15 minutes from her house, her parents still did not know where she was. With how quickly a thermal drone can be put into the air and scan large areas of land, this technology provided a fast and efficient way of scanning the area before additional resources were required.
Drones are becoming the go-to tool for law enforcement and first responders. Having a quickly deployable aerial solution provides officials an immediate eye in the sky to fully understand the situation at hand. The list of people saved by a drone continues to increase day by day.
About the drone & cameras: The DJI Matrice 210 is DJI’s top of the line enterprise drone. It features obstacle avoidance, IP43 water resistance, multiple payload configurations, universal ports, a dual-battery system, and multiple redundancies to ensure flight even in the most extreme condition. What makes this drone even more capable is its payload options and configurations. Two cameras can be mounted on the bottom (pictured) or one camera can be mounted on the top. The best payload options for search and rescue is a thermal and a zoom camera. This makes it easy for people to be spotted with a thermal camera and then use the zoom camera to see the full extent of the situation. The fully integrated Zenmuse Z30 (pictured on the right) is high powered 30x optical and 6x digital zoom camera perfect for honing in on a target. This with a FLIR Zenmuse XT (pictured on the left) thermal camera makes this drone and cameras the perfect setup for search and rescue (SAR).