Community Impact Award · ThinkCity 2026
SkySAR
AI drone-swarm concept for search and rescue that flags people, vehicles and smoke in aerial imagery on a live dashboard.
- My role
- Developer & presenter
- Team
- 6 people
- Event
- ThinkCity 2026 · Bellevue College
- Year
- 2026
The problem
Search and rescue in forests and national parks is slow and sequential, and often happens in dense terrain without cellular coverage.
What I built
- An intelligence layer that uses Gemini Vision and computer-vision models to detect people, backpacks, vehicles and smoke in aerial imagery.
- A real-time, operator-friendly dashboard that prioritizes alerts for rescue coordination.
- A swarm design that searches large areas in parallel instead of sequentially.
- Ethics by design: data is collected only during active missions, with no continuous surveillance.
Results
- Community Impact Award at the ThinkCity 2026 Smart City Hackathon, representing Bellevue College.