It was Day 3 of the search.
A snowmobiler had gone missing near Behchokǫ̀, 100 km northwest of Yellowknife. Last contact was at 4:17 PM on Tuesday. By Wednesday night, temperatures had dropped to -18°C, with wind chill near -30°C.
The team had searched by air, drone, and foot. But as darkness stretched to 17 hours a day and fresh snow erased tracks, hope was fading.
Then, on Thursday morning, a ground unit equipped with Robofinity InsightDrive™ picked up a thermal anomaly off a secondary trail — a faint heat signature partially buried under drifting snow.
They found him alive.
“He was conscious,” says a SAR coordinator. “But hypothermic. If we’d come 12 hours later… it wouldn’t have ended the same.”
What made the difference wasn’t luck. It was vision beyond light.
❄️ The Arctic Reality: Why Traditional Search Fails in the North
In the Northwest Territories, search and rescue isn’t just difficult — it’s a race against physics.
- Polar darkness sets in early — by mid-October, daylight lasts less than 8 hours
- Snow and wind erase tracks within hours
- Extreme cold reduces battery life and human endurance
- Vast terrain makes aerial coverage slow and expensive
And unlike southern searches, there are no streetlights, cell towers, or reflective clothing guarantees. A person in a dark jacket on snow is nearly invisible — especially if they’re motionless.
“Drones fail in high winds,” says a veteran SAR pilot. “Thermal drones help, but they can’t fly in storms. Ground teams are slower, but they’re reliable — if they can see.”
And until recently, they couldn’t.
A New Kind of Vision: Seeing Heat, Not Light
The breakthrough came when a Yellowknife-based unit began testing Robofinity InsightDrive™ — not as a driver aid, but as a mobile thermal detection platform.
Unlike handheld thermal scopes or aerial systems, InsightDrive™ is mounted on vehicles, runs continuously, and uses AI to filter false positives — distinguishing between a person, an animal, or a warm rock.
“It doesn’t just show heat,” says a SAR tech. “It interprets it. It alerts us when something human-sized appears in the scan — even if it’s 200 meters off the trail.”
In the Behchokǫ̀ case, the system flagged the anomaly at 68 meters, despite snow cover and low body heat. The AI recognized the shape and thermal profile as human — not a wolf, not a rock.
“That’s the difference,” the coordinator says. “We didn’t just see heat. We saw a person.”
Business Impact: Smarter, Faster, Safer Missions
Since the pilot program began:
- Search coverage has increased by 40% per shift
- False alarm rates have dropped due to AI filtering
- Rescue times have improved in zero-visibility conditions
Now, multiple NWT communities — including Inuvik, Fort Smith, and Tuktoyaktuk — are evaluating InsightDrive™ for their SAR fleets.
“It’s not replacing helicopters,” says a territorial emergency planner. “It’s extending their reach. We can send ground units deeper, later, and safer.”
The Bottom Line: In the Arctic, Visibility Is Survival
In the North, time, cold, and darkness are the enemies.
But with technology like InsightDrive™, search teams now have a new advantage: the ability to detect life when light fails.
As one rescuer put it:
“We don’t just look for people. We look for signs of warmth in a frozen world. And now, we can find them.”
Learn more about how InsightDrive™ supports search and rescue missions
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