Despite all the swimming lessons, on-duty lifeguards and active security cameras, swimmers still get into difficulties and, in the worst case, become drowning fatalities in Dutch swimming pools, knows Liza Boormans of Blue Jay. For its latest prototype the team worked with experts including the Eindhoven Rescue Brigade, who gave them an insight into the dangers and statistics.

Blue Jay is convinced that in a wide range of emergency situations drones can play a useful role. “We've now translated this idea to the swimming pool. Above all because of the social relevance but also because the noise produced by a drone is less of an issue in these surroundings - unlike, say, in a hospital. This can distract from our essential message while we are trying to get people to focus on what a drone can do.”

NXP, Blue Jay’s main partner, put the team in touch with IBM for this latest project. “We worked with them on machine learning. This means that with the help of a huge number of video images we taught the system to see what a drowning looks like.”

Sixty thousand short recordings

No fewer than sixty thousand short recordings (made in various regional indoor swimming pools, using volunteers including the trained 'victims' of the LOTUS organization) were involved. These were then watched and classified manually by Blue Jay members. Boormans: “In this way the drone learned how to recognize certain human movements and patterns while roaming over a swimming pool and scanning the scene from above. Head under, head above the water, certain arm movements and other signs like gasping for air.”

Read on below the photo.