Design of an avalanche rescue robot: state of the art of avalanche research technologies with focus on ground penetrating radar

The avalanche phenomena affects the mountain environments, especially during winter season. This kind of event can be naturally caused or can be generated by humans. The number of skiers who practice freeride activities in the ski areas or away from the ski resorts is in rapid increase. This factor causes an increase of avalanche accidents. For this purpose, it is important to develop technologies able to quickly detect people buried under an avalanche, in order to improve the survival probability in case of accident. The goal of this thesis is to study and analyze the state of the art of avalanche research technologies, and to propose a possible implementation solution able to improve the actual technologies. The paper is divided in four chapters. In the first chapter are reported some catastrophic accidents caused by avalanches. In the second part of the introductory chapter are analyzed the survival curve, the avalanches causes and the avalanches characteristics. The second chapter describes the state of the art of the technologies used for avalanche research purposes. In this section are analyzed the following technologies: ARTVA, RECCO, radar detection, GPS detection, smartphone apps, breathing sensors, 4G technology and ground penetrating radar. In the third chapter is analyzed an experiment conducted using the ground penetrating radar technology transported by a drone. The experience has been performed in Gressoney la Trinité, a place inside the Monterosa ski area. The results of this study have been treated during the section. Finally, in the last chapter are discussed all the positive and negative factors of the technologies analyzed in the thesis, and it is proposed a possible combination of different technologies in order to improve the searching time and the precision during avalanche research rescues.