Recently, our partners at Texas Department of Public Safety shared this great UAS training tip with us that we hope you find valuable.
Their team modified a rescue Timmy doll specifically for thermal UAS training. Instead of using hot hands, they attached a few sets of universal seat heaters (powered by USB power banks) to provide the thermal image below.
The Texas DPS team reported that they tested this setup in a real world environment, and it performed as expected. Timmy was able to be found from 100ft up to 400ft with a variety of thermal cameras, and Timmy’s temperature was found to be within 2 degrees of average human temperature.
You can recreate this setup with your own rescue Timmy very inexpensively. You can find the seat heaters used in the photo here and look here for a good power bank option.