Drones Learn How To Find People Lost In The Woods

Trails are narrow ribbons of civilization cutting through wilderness. They are as much about what is worth exploring as they are about what's off limits. A hiker loses a trail, and suddenly they're in a deep wilderness, unmoored from the world until they stumble back to that thin filament again. To find missing hikers, it makes sense to look near trails, and to do that, a team at the University of Zurich is training drones to identify and follow trails into the woods. The drone used by the Swiss researchers observes the environment through a pair of small cameras, similar to those used in smartphones.