SAR: from single-drone SAR missions up to 24/7 fleet patrol.
One product. One planner. One ground station. Fly a single drone on a SAR grid search, or scale up to a relay-patrolling fleet — same software, same operator workflow, same safety model.
Best-in-Class SAR & Patrol Mission Software
SAR is a complete ground station purpose-built for SAR and patrol missions on industrial PX4 / MAVLink fleets. Not a sidecar to a general-purpose mission planner — the whole stack, designed around one mission profile. The integrated fleet we sell is built on our Belgium-built Drone One — the airframe we manufacture, with thermal payload and SAR ground station included from €11,000/drone. SAR itself is software and runs on any MAVLink-compatible industrial drone (PX4 or ArduPilot, with a small companion computer for video and detection). Freefly Astro Max (USA NDAA / Blue UAS) and Quantum Systems Trinity Pro (Germany / EU sovereignty) are example compatible airframes for customers whose procurement requires a specific compliance regime — bring those, or any other MAVLink airframe, and we'll licence and integrate SAR on it.
What SAR needs from your fleet
- MAVLink v2 mission protocol — standard PX4 / ArduPilot mission upload + execution
- Live telemetry —
GLOBAL_POSITION_INT,SYS_STATUS,ATTITUDE,MISSION_CURRENTat 1–50 Hz - Mid-flight commands —
COMMAND_LONG/MISSION_ACKfor abort, RTH, speed change, force-disarm - Mid-flight parameter tuning —
PARAM_SETfor Fleet Advisor closed-loop relay tuning - Companion computer per drone — Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W or equivalent (~€50/drone) for live video and on-board detection
- WiFi or cellular link — MAVLink + companion data both reach the operator's ground station
SAR Ground Station — what runs on top
Mission planner with boustrophedon SAR grid generator and patrol route builder (linear / perimeter / area). Multi-drone fleet relay with battery-aware handoff and seamless waypoint resume. Onboard human / vessel / vehicle detection on the companion computer, alerts streamed back live with GPS coordinates and thumbnails. SAR AI — local physics-based decision engine plus optional Anthropic Claude / OpenAI / Gemini cloud refinement — for closed-loop relay parameter tuning every 30 seconds. Three-layer Safety Gate: kill-from-GS, dynamic geofence, weather-triggered abort. Full audit trail of every decision and command.
Best for: SAR, LE, fire, coastguard, and security teams who need live situational awareness during continuous operations.
Deploy a SAR Mission in Under 5 Minutes
Draw your search area, generate a grid, upload to the drone, and launch. Onboard AI detects targets autonomously. GPS-resilient navigation keeps the mission running even when satellites fail. The same workflow runs one drone or many — set Fleet Size to 1 for single-drone SAR, or 2+ for a relay-patrolling fleet.
Grid Pattern Generator
Boustrophedon sweep pattern with principal axis alignment. FOV-based spacing calculation ensures complete coverage with configurable overlap from 0% to 60%.
Interactive Map Planner
Dark-themed Leaflet map with polygon drawing tools. Define your search area visually and see real-time mission stats — distance, duration, waypoint count — as you draw.
Mission Packager
Generates a MAVLink mission and uploads it via the live telemetry channel. Mid-flight commands (abort, RTH, speed change, parameter tuning) remain available throughout the flight, so the operator never loses control of an airborne drone.
Flight Supervisor
A 7-state finite state machine (Idle, Takeoff, Grid Search, Inspect, RTH, Landing, Emergency) mirrored in the MAVLink ground station against PX4's native flight stack. Live mode changes enforced from the operator's console, with Safety Gate validation on every transition.
Onboard Vision Detection
TFLite SSD MobileNet at 5–10 FPS, running on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W companion computer (~€50/drone). Detections stream to the ground station over the MAVLink tunnel with GPS coordinates, confidence score, and a thumbnail. Targets: person, vessel, vehicle, general (COCO classes). Confidence threshold 0.6, configurable.
Safety Monitor
Continuous monitoring of battery level, GPS quality, VIO drift, geofence boundaries, wind speed, and altitude limits. The ground station monitors live MAVLink telemetry at 2–50 Hz and commands RTH or force-disarm when thresholds breach. PX4's onboard failsafes provide an independent second line of defence.
Round-the-Clock Patrol. Automated Drone Relay.
Set Fleet Size to 2 or more (up to 100) and SAR activates its fleet layer: battery-aware scheduling, drone handoff sequencing, continuous patrol logic, and exception-only operator alerting. For large AOIs, split into 2 / 4 / 8 / 16 sectors with linear route, perimeter, or area search coverage so sub-fleets patrol in parallel. Same planner, same ground station — just running more drones. Replaces crewed patrol assets at a fraction of the cost.
Fleet State Management
Real-time tracking of every drone in the fleet: status, battery percentage, position along patrol route, estimated time remaining, and comms status. All in one view.
Battery-Aware Relay
When the active drone hits the swap threshold, the standby drone dispatches to the exact handoff waypoint. Transit time is pre-calculated. Coverage gaps are minimised to seconds.
Exception-Only Alerts
No telemetry dashboards. Operators are alerted only for critical battery, comms loss, handoff failure, detection events, weather exceedance, or fleet exhaustion.
24/7 Patrol Continuity
The patrol route loops indefinitely. Each new drone picks up at the exact waypoint where the last one left off. The patrol is continuous and monotonic until the operator stops it.
Patrol Route Builder
Define linear coastline routes, polygon perimeters, or area-search lawnmower coverage on the map. Configure fleet size, battery thresholds, and base position. Preview the relay timeline before launch.
Fleet Cost Advantage
SAR's Integrated Fleet tier delivers a turnkey 24/7 orchestrated patrol capability from €11,000 per drone on our Belgium-built Drone One (thermal included). A 3-drone Drone One fleet at €30,000 runs a full round-the-clock SAR Ground Station deployment that replaces crewed patrol assets costing hundreds of thousands of euros annually. SAR is software-flexible — it also runs on any MAVLink-compatible industrial drone. Freefly Astro Max (NDAA / Blue UAS) and Quantum Systems Trinity Pro (EU-sovereign) are example compatible airframes shown for total-cost comparison; bring your own MAVLink fleet and we licence SAR alone from €3,000/drone/year. See pricing →
SAR AI
Physics-based decision engine that dynamically optimises relay parameters. Adjusts swap timing, patrol speed, fleet dispatch, and relay overlap in real time. Runs offline on the ground station — no internet required.
Safety Gate
Every SAR AI decision passes through a Safety Gate that validates against critical thresholds. Battery minimums, wind limits, and geofence boundaries are never overridden — physics always has the final word.
Local + Cloud Intelligence
Optional cloud enhancement via Claude AI when connectivity exists. The advisor shows LOCAL or CLOUD source on every recommendation so operators always know where the decision came from.
Auto-Sector Patrol for Large AOIs
Fleets up to 100 drones. SAR picks the sector count automatically from fleet size, drawn AOI, battery flight/charge cycle, and swap threshold. The rule is honest: prefer fewer sectors with continuous coverage over more sectors with gaps. A fleet of 12 on 70-min flight batteries becomes 1 sector with 12 drones (always one airborne) instead of 4 sectors with 3 each (coverage gaps on every charge cycle). Drop to 6 and the card turns amber: “discontinuous — grow fleet to 14 to lock in 2-sector 24/7 coverage.” Equal-area partitioning via binary-search bisection; outer-boundary-only perimeter routes (no wasted time patrolling internal partition cuts); linear, perimeter, or area-search coverage per sector; each sector runs its own relay in parallel under one FleetCommander. Manual override lives behind an Advanced disclosure. Deep dive →
No Mid-Air Collisions
Three layers. Pre-allocated intra-sector altitude stagger (5 m per drone). Per-sector transit-altitude bands (5 m per sector) so returning drones from different sectors never share vertical airspace. And a runtime proximity sweep every 200 ms across every airborne drone — if any two come within 20 m horizontally and 4 m vertically, the lower-priority drone climbs 6 m out of the way. Takeoff stagger (5 s between sector launches) keeps adjacent bays clear. This is the core orchestration guarantee: a fleet of 100 drones with one operator, zero mid-air conflicts. How it works →
Per-Sector Coverage Gaps
A coverage gap — sub-fleet cycling through charge, no standby ready — is scoped to the sector it happens in. Sector 3's gap doesn't black out the operator view. Alerts are tagged with sector index; other sectors keep patrolling.
How SAR AI Works
Every 30 seconds, SAR AI reads live fleet telemetry from your MAVLink drones and computes optimised relay parameters through a three-stage pipeline. Local physics first, optional cloud refinement when connectivity exists, Safety Gate enforcement on every decision before anything reaches the fleet.
Physics-based model running on the ground station. Models platform-specific battery discharge curves, wind drag penalties (+10% drain per m/s above 3), transit power consumption, and charge times. Evaluates fleet depth, detection density, and current weather to compute swap threshold (15–30%), relay overlap (0–30%), transit speed (1.0–2.0x), patrol speed (2–8 m/s), and dispatch priority. Zero internet, zero latency.
When internet is available (Starlink, cellular, field Wi-Fi), the local decision is reviewed by Claude AI. The AI layer adds what the physics model cannot: weather forecast trends, multi-factor pattern recognition, and contextual reasoning for edge cases. If connectivity drops, the local decision is already applied. No degradation.
Every decision — local or cloud — passes through a Safety Gate before reaching the fleet. Critical battery thresholds, geofence boundaries, and wind limits are never overridden. Full audit trail of every decision logged for post-mission debrief.
The operator’s UI shows LOCAL or CLOUD on every recommendation. Read the technical deep dive →
System Overview
SAR sits as the application layer on top of an industrial MAVLink fleet. The ground station handles mission planning, fleet orchestration, AI-assisted parameter tuning, and Safety Gate enforcement. The fleet provides flight execution, telemetry, and on-board video and detection via a small companion computer per drone.
Ground Station
- Map Planner + live fleet view
- Fleet State Manager
- SAR AI (local + cloud)
- Safety Gate + audit log
Industrial MAVLink airframe
- PX4 / Auterion flight stack
- Vision detector on companion (5–10 FPS)
- Live video (gstreamer → RTSP/WebRTC)
- MAVFTP log streaming
Drone One (sold) · Astro Max / Trinity Pro (compatible)
Fleet Layer — active at Fleet Size ≥ 2 (MAVLink only)
- Fleet State Manager
- Battery-Aware Relay Engine
- Dispatch & Handoff Sequencer (seamless waypoint resume)
- Sector Planner (1 / 2 / 4 / 8 / 16 sub-sectors, equal-area)
- Exception Alert Engine (7 alert types)
- Patrol Route Planner (linear, perimeter, area search)
- SAR AI (local decision engine + optional Claude cloud)
- Runtime Safety Gate + collision-avoidance sweep
- Fleet Manifest Export
Technical Specs
Core specifications
Planner-level and safety thresholds for the SAR Ground Station running against any supported MAVLink fleet.
| Supported platforms | Drone One (Belgium, sold by us, thermal incl.); also compatible with Freefly Astro Max (USA / NDAA), Quantum Systems Trinity Pro (Germany / EU), and any PX4 / ArduPilot MAVLink-compatible aircraft |
| Navigation | GPS + Visual-Inertial Odometry hybrid |
| Search pattern | Boustrophedon (axis-aligned) |
| Camera FOV | Depends on chosen camera module — Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 (102° HFOV wide variant) is the reference companion-computer payload |
| Detection model | TFLite SSD MobileNet v2 (pluggable) |
| Detection rate | 5–10 FPS on Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W companion (Pi 5 upgrade path for higher throughput) |
| Detection targets | Person, vessel, vehicle, general (COCO classes) |
| Cruise speed | 2–8 m/s (configurable, clamped to airframe profile) |
| Altitude | 10–50 m AGL (configurable) |
| Grid overlap | 0–60% (configurable) |
| Safety states | Native PX4 flight modes mirrored in the ground station supervisor with Safety Gate validation on every transition |
| Geofence | 500 m from takeoff (configurable) |
| Battery RTH / emergency | 30% / 15% (configurable) |
| Max wind | 8 m/s (configurable, hard abort at 10 m/s) |
| VIO drift threshold | 5 m |
Fleet-Mode Specifications
Fleet patrol — relay, Fleet Advisor closed-loop, sector orchestration — runs on industrial MAVLink fleets (2–100 drones). Specs below are the operational parameters of the SAR Ground Station fleet layer.
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Fleet size | 2–100 drones (configurable) |
| Supported airframes | Drone One (sold by us, thermal incl.); compatible with Freefly Astro Max (USA / NDAA), Quantum Systems Trinity Pro (Germany / EU), any PX4 / ArduPilot MAVLink-compatible aircraft |
| Patrol modes | Linear route, polygon perimeter, area-search lawnmower |
| Auto-sector partitioning | 1 / 2 / 4 / 8 / 16 sub-sectors (equal-area bisection) |
| Handoff strategy | Waypoint resume (seamless position handoff) |
| Relay strategy | Sequential continuous with pre-launch dispatch |
| Swap threshold | 15–30% battery (default 20%, Auto or Advanced) |
| Critical threshold | 5–20% battery (default 10%) |
| Alert model | Exception-only, 7 alert types, live operator overlay |
| Fleet Advisor / SAR AI | 30 s closed-loop decisions (local engine + optional cloud refinement), runtime Safety Gate |
| Collision avoidance | Plan-time stagger + runtime 200 ms proximity sweep (20 m XY, 4 m Z) |
| Reference 24/7 fleet | 3× Drone One + SAR Ground Station + dual EO/IR payload (incl.) + 2 operators — €30,000 turnkey |
| Deployment path | Integrated Fleet from €11,000/drone (Belgium-built Drone One, thermal incl.) — turnkey, or Software-only from €3,000/drone/year for existing MAVLink fleets (see pricing) |
Supported airframes
SAR runs on any MAVLink-compatible industrial drone (PX4 or ArduPilot). Pick for compliance, endurance, or payload — the mission logic is identical. Drone One is the airframe we sell as part of the Integrated Fleet bundle. Astro Max and Trinity Pro are shown as example compatible airframes covering the two most common procurement compliance regimes (NDAA / Blue UAS, EU sovereignty); they're illustrative, not exhaustive — bring any other MAVLink airframe and we'll licence and integrate SAR on it.
| Platform | Origin | Status | Best for | Thermal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drone One | Belgium (own design) | Turnkey bundle | Evaluation SAR / Fire / Patrol pilot programmes; first-pilot deployments; tight budgets | ✓ Included — dual EO/IR (4K visible + 640×512 thermal) |
| Freefly Astro Max | USA (NDAA / Blue UAS) | Example compatible airframe | US federal SAR, mapping-heavy missions, open Smart Dovetail payload | Smart Dovetail payload ecosystem (~€7,000 addon) |
| Quantum Systems Trinity Pro | Germany (EU sovereignty) | Example compatible airframe | Long-endurance VTOL fixed-wing coverage for large maritime / wilderness AOIs | Configurable payload (~€13,000 addon) |
| Astro Max and Trinity Pro are examples — SAR runs on any PX4 or ArduPilot MAVLink-compatible industrial drone with a companion computer. Bring your own fleet, or specify a different airframe at procurement time, and we'll licence and integrate SAR on it. | ||||
On Trinity Pro and Quantum's software stack: Trinity Pro ships with QBase 3D, Quantum's bundled mapping and surveying software. A Drone Company SAR is the search-and-rescue / patrol layer on the same drone — different mission profile, complementary software. Customers running Trinity Pro for aerial surveying use QBase 3D; the same hardware running search-and-rescue or coastal patrol uses A Drone Company SAR. They coexist on the airframe. We don't replace QBase 3D and we don't compete with Quantum's defence-grade MOSAIC UXS multi-domain C2 platform — civilian SAR is a deliberately different product class.