Land Rover have just launched ‘Project Hero’ which has been created by Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations in partnership with the Austrian Red Cross and features innovative drone technology. It will be trialled by emergency response teams over the next year.
Project Hero is an advanced communication vehicle created to support Jaguar Land Rover’s partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the world’s largest humanitarian network. It is hoped that it will help the Red Cross save lives by speeding up response times to disasters.
Since 1954, Land Rover has supported the Red Cross and supplied 120 vehicles to the IFRC for deployment in all corners of the globe. Project Hero is the first to be supplied with a roof-mounted drone which enhances the outstanding capability of the all-new Land Rover Discovery. A fully integrated landing system, featuring self-centring technology, enables the drone to land on Project Hero when the vehicle is in motion – a world first.
The drone enhances the new Discovery’s already outstanding capability. With the drone airborne, live footage can be transmitted to the Red Cross’s emergency response teams, helping them respond more quickly and effectively to landslides, earthquakes, floods and avalanches. Dramatic landscape changes can make maps redundant, which adds to the danger and difficulty of finding and rescuing survivors, so the drone’s bird’s-eye view will allow rescuers to investigate an emergency scene from a safe distance.
