Rescue drones are finding lost hikers by tricking their phones into thinking they're at home, making the phone 'scream' its location to the Wi-Fi.
April 13, 2026
Original Paper
"Take Me Home, Wi-Fi Drone": A Drone-based Wireless System for Wilderness Search and Rescue
arXiv · 2604.09115
The Takeaway
It transforms a basic smartphone behavior—automatically searching for known networks—into a powerful tool for finding people in the wilderness. This system provides a low-cost, high-accuracy way to locate victims even if they are unable to call for help.
From the abstract
Wilderness Search and Rescue (WiSAR) represents a longstanding and critical societal challenge, demanding innovative and automatic technological solutions. In this paper, we introduce Wi2SAR, a novel autonomous drone-based wireless system for long-range, through-occlusion WiSAR operations, without relying on existing infrastructure. Our basic insight is to leverage the automatic reconnection behavior of modern Wi-Fi devices to known networks. By mimicking these networks via on-drone Wi-Fi, Wi2SA