South Korea’s telecom giant KT Corp. has developed a disaster and safety platform that will assist search for survivors in emergency situations and treat them using unmanned airships and drones.

KT plans to propose the platform to be used in national public-safety long term evolution (PS-LTE) network projects to help boost the country’s overall disaster response system.

The platform, dubbed Skyship, which was unveiled by KT on Monday at its training institute in Wonju, Gangwon Province, consists of unmanned plane Skyship, moving remote control center Skyship Command, Control & Communication (3C) Station, a drone and a robot. The Skyship that was developed jointly with local company Metis Co. last year is an unmanned airship filled with helium gas and loaded with communication module and high resolution thermal imaging camera.

The platform consists of a specialized drone to counter catastrophes and a mobile signal-based survivor search solution called Skyscan. When the solution uses subminiature LTE equipment to locate a survivor within the radius of 50 meters from the missing point, the drone loaded on the Skyship is mobilized to get detailed location information of the survivor. In the meantime, the Skyship robot delivers emergency relief goods to the survivor before the rescue team arrives and uses its camera and communication function to stream field situation in real time to the emergency center using its camera and communication function.

An unnamed official from KT said that when a survivor’s mobile phone signal is connected to the telecom company’s data, it can access name and age information of the survivor. When connected to residential and medical record information of the survivor, it can also share information such as blood type and medical history to a medical institution which will enable swift and accurate emergency action.

KT expected that once its next-generation 5G mobile communication service is commercialized, the platform will be able to provide more advanced services including prompt transmission of large ultra-high definition 4K video taken on site to the emergency center, a move that would speed up disaster-countering actions. KT aims to complete the 5G network-based safety and disaster platform by 2020 after commercialization of the wireless service next year. The new system is expected to be loaded with up to eight drones in 2020 and Skyship 3 that can fly for 12 hours.

By Seo Dong-cheol and Lee Eun-joo

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]