Building Autonomous future for First Responders in the city of Vienna

Vienna (Austria), 16th Sept 2021. Unmanned Life showcased its Autonomous Search and Rescue Product. Partnered with the City of Vienna, Stadt Wien, Magenta Telecom and Austro Control, the objective of this demonstration was to prove how Magenta’s 5G Network and Unmanned Life’s Autonomous Robotic Orchestration Platform can be combined to save lives by minimising the heavy reliance on high cost and low efficiency responses that include manually operated helicopters and professional divers in the field of emergency search and rescue.

“For the City of Vienna, Smart City means that a high quality of living is provided through resource conservation and with the help of social and technical innovations. Projects like the 5G Challenge enable the city to explore and evaluate completely new areas for the use of modern technology,”

Klemens Himpele CIO of the City of Vienna.

“Smart city solutions make urban living spaces fit for a connected, digital future, as the example of the life-saving drone from Unmanned Life shows. The technologies required for this, such as the 5G network from Magenta Telekom, create the basis for new, innovative approaches to life in public spaces. They can play a key role in shaping the future of the city of Vienna”, says

Werner Kraus, CCO Business at Magenta Telekom (T-Mobile Austria)

Drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide accounting for 7% of all injury-related deaths. Currently, a combination of manned helicopters and professional divers are used as first respondents. It comes as no surprise, that this action for rescue is achieved through extensive consumption of time, money and physical effort. To tackle this issue and enhance the efficacy of emergency search and rescue, Unmanned Life deployed its search and rescue product which consisted of a fleet of three Autonomous drones equipped with multiple sensors. These autonomous drones were seamlessly orchestrated by Unmanned Life’s Autonomous Robotic Orchestration Platform hosted on Magenta’s 5G/Edge infrastructure.

“The entire drone sector has experienced incredibly dynamic development in recent years, with intensive research and innovative applications being tested. Austro Control sees itself as an enabler and reliable partner to develop new technological solutions and application areas, and to provide guidance to the industry when applying the new EU-regulations. This showcase today is a fine example of the enormous potential this new technology has to offer, by demonstrating how drones can be used to save lives and help make our cities safer”,

says Austro Control Managing Director Valerie Hackl

The demonstration showcased two autonomous search drones which scanned the river while providing real-time HD live streaming video. Once the target’s location was confirmed, the third rescue drone autonomously took off and delivered a life jacket to the identified person in distress. By managing the end-to-end process from search, identification to providing effective response, we ensure:

• Accurate assessment of the emergency incident.
• Faster response time
• Lower costs
• Reduced personnel on the ground (quote from Unmanned since we talk about the benefits of the product here)

“I am very pleased with the first deployment of our Company in the post-pandemic world. It not only shows the potential of autonomous robotics in protecting citizens and make first responders work more efficient by freeing up to 60% of resources to work on other important city safety matters. It also presents to the world the capacity of our team to work with leading companies and institutions, deliver cutting-edge innovation and leverage our autonomy-as-a-service platform to make autonomous deployments easier for non-robotics experts. The possibility to scale and replicate this product is enormous and we will work with our partners across the globe to use autonomous robots to have a positive impact in people´s lives.”

Nicholas Zylberglajt, CEO of Unmanned Life

After the successful demonstration of Emergency search and rescue in the city of Vienna, we hope to scale up and make our product bigger and better. This is a game-changing innovation that is evidently accessible for non-robotic experts too. In the future, we are looking to commercialise our search and rescue product to inspire other countries and build a wider geographic portfolio expanding to other European countries where we can showcase our product and its vast capabilities.

We believe in building a smarter and efficient future and that is exactly where we are headed!

About Unmanned Life: Unmanned Life is changing the way robots are being deployed by providing seamless orchestration of autonomous robotics with its Autonomy-as-a-Service software platform. Unmanned Life integrates different technologies. Such as AI, 5G, and Edge computing with multiple robots, like drones and/or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and a variety of capabilities to enable autonomous robotics operations across multiple industries in particular, Industry 4.0 and Smart Cities