Casualty evacuation process comparison of single patient evacuation with unmanned ground vehicles to multiple carrier evacuation from conflict zones

Abstract: Optimization of casualty evacuation from conflict zones aims at increasing the chance of a critically wounded soldier or civilian reaching life-saving care, minimizing secondary damages, and maximizing the utilization of available emergency medical resources. With the emergence of small, (autonomous) unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), the initial evacuation away from the frontlines could be possible earlier and in a near-continuous fashion. This study evaluates the limits of increased efficiency of employing autonomous evacuation UGVs capable of transporting one patient at a time. Only the initial, combat evacuation to the battalion area of service, or combat nurse’s station is considered. The baseline information, such as ranges of distances, was obtained from a live simulation experiment, where participants consisted of 431 conscripts, 27 commissioned officers and 37 armored reserve officer students all from the armored brigade of Finland. The experiments were run during May and June 2024. The participants were divided into groups, and each group completed 4 conflict scenarios. In half of the scenarios, the evacuation UGV was remotely operated, and in half of the simulations it was implemented as a fully autonomous and mature system with a wizard of Oz method. The results of this paper give estimates of a sufficient number of continually operating evacuation UGVs necessary to evacuate 100 casualties within 60 minutes, and estimated differences in cost-effectiveness compared to an evacuation vehicle with a larger capacity.

Keywords: Casualty Evacuation, Evacuation Processes, Unmanned Ground Vehicle, Emergency Management, Tactical Evacuation, Disaster Robotics

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005912

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