# Audio-Based Search and Rescue with a Drone: Highlights from the IEEE Signal Processing Cup 2019 Student Competition

## TL;DR

This paper discusses a UAV-embedded audio localization challenge from the IEEE Signal Processing Cup 2019, highlighting its potential for search and rescue operations especially in visually obstructed environments.

## Contribution

It presents an overview of the competition, including tasks, team approaches, and technical strategies for UAV-based sound source localization in emergency scenarios.

## Key findings

- Multiple teams participated with diverse technical approaches.
- The competition highlighted the effectiveness of audio localization in rescue missions.
- Insights into UAV audio processing techniques were gained.

## Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as drones, have raised increasing interest in recent years. Search and rescue scenarios where humans in emergency situations need to be quickly found in areas difficult to access constitute an important field of application for this technology. While research efforts have mostly focused on developing video-based solutions for this task \cite{lopez2017cvemergency}, UAV-embedded audio-based localization has received relatively less attention. Though, UAVs equipped with a microphone array could be of critical help to localize people in emergency situations, in particular when video sensors are limited by a lack of visual feedback due to bad lighting conditions or obstacles limiting the field of view. This motivated the topic of the 6th edition of the IEEE Signal Processing Cup (SP Cup): a UAV-embedded sound source localization challenge for search and rescue. In this article, we share an overview of the IEEE SP Cup experience including the competition tasks, participating teams, technical approaches and statistics.