Some drone tech that sounds very worthwhile

Forget the stupid "use a drone to deliver coffee and pizza" wasteful ideas, this one sound very sensible and useful:

It's a race against the clock when someone falls overboard: People's chances of being found before they drown from exhaustion or freeze to death dwindle by the minute. Rescue efforts are often hampered by the time it takes a vessel at full throttle to halt so a rescue boat can be deployed and start searching for the person, who is by now far from the ship.

The data paint a grim picture: Figures from, for example, the Cruise Lines International Association show that more than 70% of people who fell overboard between 2009 and 2019 died.

Researchers at DTU are working to improve these odds by developing a prototype for a fully automated drone that can be dispatched automatically from a moving ship as soon as such a man overboard event is confirmed.

The drone has three types of cameras so it can see at night and spot body heat, enabling it to identify a person in the water. Once it is fully developed, the drone will carry an inflatable life jacket that sends a GPS signal.

"This has a twofold purpose: One is to extend the person's life in the water—the other is to guide a lifeboat to them easily," explains Ph.D. student Dimosthenis Angelis.

A life jacket can extend survival time in 4–10 degrees Celsius (39–50 degrees Fahrenheit) water from 30–60 minutes to as much as three hours, according to the Life Jacket Association. Survival time depends on several things, including the state of the sea and the person's swimming ability. 

I mean, there would probably be a market to have at least a few on every single cruise ship - not to mention merchant ships.  I would guess more people fall off cruise ships than merchant?   Let's ask an AI!:

 Cruise ships: ~20–25 per year

This is the best-documented category. According to a 2020 CLIA report, an average of 19 people per year fell off cruise ships between 2009 and 2019, with 212 total "man overboard" incidents over that decade. More recent figures are a little higher — in 2019, cruise ships reported 28 incidents worldwide, and in 2022, there were 42 documented overboard incidents across global cruise fleets. The survival rate is grim: of the 212 incidents between 2009 and 2019, 170 were fatal — a survival rate of roughly 20%. Alcohol is a major factor, and in reality, at least some of these incidents are suicide attempts rather than accidents.

Merchant ships: harder to count, but likely more in total

This is less well-documented precisely because merchant seafarers are a working population rather than paying passengers, and there's no single global registry. However, the numbers are substantial. A 2025 ILO global register covering ships under the Maritime Labour Convention recorded 403 seafarer fatalities across 51 countries, with "persons overboard" the second-leading cause of death at 91 cases — behind illness/disease (139 cases) but ahead of occupational accidents (74 cases). That's from only 51 reporting countries, so the true global figure is certainly higher. Broader industry data from 2019 recorded 112 seafarers killed and 116 missing globally. Not all of those are overboard incidents, but disappearances at sea account for a large share.

 OK, so there should be a market for them on merchant ships too - although I guess countries with low regard for crew safety are not going to be splurging on these anytime soon.

But yeah, it just seems something with obvious life saving potential.