Vision-based Human Identification with Face and Nametape Recognition in Aerial Casualty Monitoring System

In emergency rescue scenarios, rapid identification of human casualties is a critical first step in enhancing emergency medical response. This task can be limited by the physical and cognitive capacity of rescue personnel, who are exposed to significant risk. The use of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) equipped with autonomous casualty assessment abilities can reduce these limitations and risks by enabling remote casualty detection, identification, and vitals assessment, providing standoff protection, and eliminating the need for human personnel to access the potentially hazardous scene. This paper presents a vision-based casualty assessment framework and specifically discusses our casualty identification software, which is designed to recognize the faces of casualties and identify their nametapes in images captured by sUAS under realistic conditions. Our approach addresses the limitations of the sUAS-captured long-distance images to enable accurate identification in challenging casualty monitoring situations. The face and nametape recognition algorithms will be integrated into the larger casualty perception framework and embedded into sUAS platforms to assist with emergency rescue operations. The total casualty perception system will detect, identify, and evaluate the condition of casualties from a remote location, providing standoff protection to first responders and rapid information to inform a suitable medical treatment plan.