One of the SAR teams west of my area are in the test phase process of using small drones to assist in SAR searches. Some of these drones are real cutting edge technology in which my DJI Phantom 2 Quadcopter, pales in comparison.

I think that in the next few years, many SAR teams will be adopting drones as part of their searching capability. What most need to keep in mind is that the SAR drones currently being developed and tested are on the small size and in general, should not be compared to the large cost military drones that people think of when they hear the word drone.

The smaller sized SAR drones are meant to give the operator a birds eye view of heavily treed areas, small canyons and ravines, riverbeds etc that cannot be readily searched with helicopters or too dangerous and resource demanding to search by ground teams. Also some of the drones can carry small payloads of first aid kits etc but at the expense of flying time, lift capability, altitude ceiling and so on which means the SAR teams need to balance the usefulness of drones for every search as no 2 searches are ever the same.

Take a look on Youtube, there are some good videos of SAR drone demonstrations.