Geneva Motor Show 2017: Land Rover Displays Discovery Project Hero

Published March 8, 2017
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Land Rover has supported Red Cross for 64 years. Project Hero will make them more efficient during search and rescue operations.

Land Rover's Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) team has come up with a unique solution to support the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' (IFRC) humanitarian efforts. The Project Hero is built upon a heavily modified Land Rover Discovery SUV. The SVO team has made several design and engineering changes to the Discovery SUV and made it more capable. The Project Hero vehicle will assist Red Cross in its search and rescue missions during disasters.

The SUV's roof opens up electronically to reveal the landing and take-off area for a small drone with longer battery life and a wider range of transmission so that it can work overtime during disaster management. The landing area is outlined with markers for automated landing and take off. The magnetic base makes it easy to get a perfect landing every single time. The drone is equipped with multiple cameras to survey the area. There's also infrared tech to help it look for heat signatures even in a pitch-dark environment. Knowing the terrain beforehand and narrowing down the efforts to a limited area helps with better utilisation of the available manpower during S&R operations.

The Discovery is modified to act as a base command centre for the drone and is equipped to receive and transmit live footage for analysis.

The drone can not only land and take off without any inputs, but it can also do that while the Discovery is on the move. Of course, it can only happen while the SUV is running at a slow-ish speed and on a smooth surface.

The first specimen of the Project Hero is going through complex rescue scenarios during its test at the Red Cross training centre in Erzberg. It'll be deployed to Vienna for a full-time job in mid-June of 2017.