AI Drone with Thermal Camera Found Lost Tourists in Kosciuszko National Park in Five Hours
The New South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (Fire and Rescue NSW) used a drone with artificial intelligence and thermal imaging camera for the first time to search for lost tourists. Two men, around 20 years old, who didn't return to the planned rendezvous point of their route near Jindabyne, were reported missing on the evening of Tuesday, June 23, 2026. The drone found them within five hours — the service called the operation a first of its kind.
AI-processed from Guardian; edited by Hamidun News
The Fire and Rescue NSW service used a drone equipped with artificial intelligence and thermal imaging for the first time to search for people — with its help, two tourists lost in Kosciuszko National Park were found within five hours, The Guardian reports.
How the search unfolded
Two men around age 20 were reported missing at 19:00 on Tuesday, June 23, 2026: they had veered off a hiking trail near the town of Jindabyne and failed to return to their designated meeting point on time. A drone equipped with a thermal imaging camera and capable of detecting red light from mobile phone screens was deployed in the search.
- Missing persons reported at 19:00 on Tuesday, June 23, 2026
- Tourists had strayed from the route near Jindabyne in Kosciuszko National Park
- Fire and Rescue NSW conducted the search using an AI-based drone with thermal imaging
- The men were found and brought to safety within five hours of the missing person report
- The service called the operation first-of-its-kind
Why thermal imaging drone proved effective
Thermal imaging drones have long been used in search and rescue operations: the camera detects temperature differences between human bodies and their surroundings even in darkness and dense forest, where visual searches from air or ground can take hours or days. Adding AI to such a drone accelerates the processing itself — instead of rescuers manually reviewing hours of video footage, the system helps quickly identify silhouettes resembling humans on footage and signals like light from phone screens.
It was precisely this combination of thermal imaging and AI-based recognition that allowed Fire and Rescue NSW teams to reduce search time to five hours in an area where lost people are often searched for much longer.
What this means
This successful first-of-its-kind operation demonstrates that drones equipped with AI and thermal imagers can become a standard tool for search and rescue services in difficult terrain, significantly reducing the time currently spent on manual searches for people.
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