Person overboard (POB) accidents often occur at bad
weather conditions, such as strong winds, heavy seas, poor
visibility and low temperature. The operations of search
and rescue (SAR) at persons overboard incidents are
technically very complicated and cause a potential risk for
SAR teams. Often accidents have not been noted in time to
quickly respond by activating the chain of survival. A new,
autonomously acting, fully integrated rescue system is
under development to reduce fatal accidents at sea (Figure
1). A sensor integrated in the life-jacket sends a signal after
the person falls overboard. Once the signal is received,
the SAR station located on the parent ship releases the
automatically controlled rescue boat (RB), which advances
towards the POB. The position of the POB and RB
is transmitted via GALILEO satellite techniques to the
SAR station. This information is used to set the route
for the rescue boat. After reaching a close distance to
the POB, the rescue vessel is controlled manually by an
operator from the SAR station. At this stage of the SAR
operation the observation of the POB is performed by an
infrared camera device integrated on the RB. The video
information is transmitted to the SAR station and used
for dynamic positioning of the rescue boat, approaching
to the POB and to salvage it from the water. Afterwards
the POB is returned by the RB to the parent ship. See
table 1 and figure 2 for further details of rescue boat.