USAR RESCUECAMERA & SEARCHCAMERA FIRSTLOOK 360° WIRELESS STREAMING

When search and rescue cameras came on the market in the early 1990s, they fundamentally changed the way technical search specialists conducted operations in collapsed buildings. Search and rescue cameras gave you the ability to see voids that were otherwise inaccessible.

The best possible technology is not always used
Older but still-used search cameras often contain an image sensor mounted in a housing that can move left or right via a series of small servo motors attached to finely graduated gears, drives or pulleys. The logical thinking behind this: The camera is placed in a room and moved left and right, then the camera body is rotated 90° so the camera head can be moved up or down to view the rest of the room.

The challenge here is that these movements require a certain amount of space in the empty room. In some cases, however, there is not enough space to move the camera head in this way. If there is not enough space, such a mechanism can quickly be damaged in use. As anyone who uses them regularly will attest, the mechanical head is prone to breakage, defective, expensive repairs, and potentially long downtimes.

The latest generation of search and rescue cameras can already do more
What if the search and rescue camera used contained no moving parts, was versatile, and – most importantly – reduced search times and reduced deployment costs?

Exactly this camera is already available from Firstlook360. The rescue camera offers spherical 360° live streaming and has steering and control options for a structured search. It is controlled via a tablet running the FL360 app. All structured search is done by simply swiping a finger on the tablet’s screen.

The camera offers two-way audio communication, adjustable 360° lighting, wired or wireless operation, live stream or still image recording, time/date/GPS location, mobile connectivity – all in a custom molded IP68 housing.

What exactly is a spherical image?
Technically, the images and videos that the FL360 camera transmits are an indoor spherical panoramic view. To explain this, just imagine taking pictures from the front, back, top, bottom, left and right at the same time, and then stitching them together to form a cuboid with yourself standing in the middle. A spherical view has correspondingly more views and you are not standing in the center of a cuboid, but of a sphere, seeing the captured images.

Spherical 360° imaging is a profound change from what rescue workers have been used to. It captures not only what is in front of the person taking the image, but also what surrounds them. In this way, a comprehensive, high-resolution image of a specific event is created at a specified point in time.

What does this mean for the rescue team?
Such a comprehensive image capture is not only able to capture a snapshot of an object. It captures the entire and interactive context in which the camera is located. The viewer of a shot can see after the fact (On the video) not only what the operator is focused on, but they can also rescan the environment or activities as if they were there themselves.

During operations following natural or man-made disasters – earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and bombings – time is a precious commodity for those trapped. The ability to survey the entire room in seconds allows rescuers to search and subsequently coordinate rescue operations much more quickly and accurately.

Thanks to the wireless transmission of the recorded images and the recorded 360° videos, to the tablet, you can involve rescuers and disaster experts such as doctors, paramedics and civil engineers to better assess the situations accordingly. Thanks to the video recordings, they don’t necessarily have to be on-site, but can also assist you in the assessment from other locations.

Sharing information and managing complex, coordinated rescue operations make Firstlook360 a great and indispensable tool for global rescue teams. With 360° spherical imaging and the FL360 search and rescue camera, the rescue industry now has an entirely new, life-saving technology at its disposal.