UAV-Based Search and Rescue in Avalanches using ARVA: An Extremum Seeking Approach

This work deals with the problem of localizing a victim buried by an avalanche by means of a drone equipped with an ARVA (Appareil de Recherche de Victimes d'Avalanche) sensor. The proposed control solution is based on a "model-free" extremum seeking strategy which is shown to succeed in steering the drone in a neighborhood of the victim position. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm is tested in Gazebo simulation environment, where a new flight mode and a new controller module have been implemented as an extension of the well-known PX4 open source flight stack. Finally, to test usability, we present hardware-in-the-loop simulations on a Pixhawk 2 Cube board.