Our Mission
SearchWing develops and builds unmanned aerial vehicles to find people in distress at sea. We are an independent non-profit organisation of volunteers with equal rights. We help all humans in distress regardless of origin, nationality, religious or political believes. The drones will only be used to find people who want to be found. We provide our drones to all organisations who pursue these same objectives. We will not provide third parties with drones or sensitive technologies who have objectives that do not comply with the objectives of SearchWing. We inform about our work in order to highlight the situation of people in distress. The current focus of our work in the mediterranean sea is due to the humanitarian catastrophe there. The current search and rescue activities in the mediterranean are only a fight against a symptom of the current border policy of the EC. We support the request of the UNHCR for safe and legal pathways and we support the request to establish a european search and rescue organisation.
SearchWing Augsburg
I watched the 2016 CCC talk of Steini, Ruben Neugebauer and Bentho in spring 2017 who proposed the idea of a light drone which can support the search activities of civilian search and rescue organisations like SeaWatch e.V., Sea-Eye e.V., Proactiva Open Arms and ResQship e.V. in the mediterranean sea. In May 2017 I proposed the idea to students of the Hochschule Augsburg and the founding meeting took place on 8th of May 2017. The combination of technical challenges to build a drone and the feeling to do something about the huge number of humans drowning have driven us since. – Friedrich Beckmann
SearchWing – today
Today SearchWing and the 2022 founded association SearchWing e.V. consist of a team of volunteers from all over Germany. We operate two workshops in Berlin and Augsburg.
Partnerships
We would like to partner with all NGOs that are part of the civil search and rescue fleet. At the moment intensive partnerships connect us to the following NGOs:
The development of the drone is split in different work groups.
Our Team (in alphabetical order)
Björn Hauffe
Fast cars – fast yachts.
Christian Panhans
Christian can see the waves above 100MHz and does highfrequency telemetry modems and other mystery “things”.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Friedrich Beckmann
Founding Member of the project, heart and soul of the project. Head thinker and head motivator!
Gregor Walter
Gregor likes planes.
Jonas Gehrke
Heart and soul of the project – experienced builder, working on the Return-To-Ship together with Anna. Our beloved project leader and meeting moderator 🙂
Jonathan Zeidler
Jonathan builds piles of EPP material when milling a new design of the fuselage. He joined the team in 2019 and jumped right into the CAD design of the dual
Read MoreMai Ly Le
Mai works on our flight-data-service infrastructure.
Marco Krippner
MAPR Student
Marco develops and builds the new drone based on composite technology with the improved reliability for harsh salt water sea environments. He is already a good friend of PVA –
Read MorePetrosilius
Working on the image processing and payload part of the drone.
Philipp Borgers
Specialist in all styles
Richard Meinsen
Richard has been working at searchwing since the 2019 Deep Berlin Hackathon. Taking part with the goal of helping with image processing, he took over the image transfer with mavlink
Read MoreRicardo Martinez
Ricardo loves drones as much as he loves code and music. Contributes mostly in software development for the ground station.
Shirin Neubert
Works on aircraft design and is an expert on the team for aircraft design with FRP construction. Actually has own flight experience as a pilot.
Vincent Brückner
Vincent can change the milling cutter in less than 60 seconds after hours of milling sessions for a new fuselage design. He works on the fuselage design with CAD and
Read MoreContact us!
Want to join the team? Do think our plane could support your mission? Contact us:
Imprint: Hochschule Augsburg
