SEARCH and rescue drones could be used to save lives on rural terrains after a pioneering trial.

Field tests by the University of Central Lancashire showed hour-long mountain rescue searches could be reduced to just minutes.

Drones designed to fly overhead and send images back to a control room were trialled in the Lakes with Patterdale Mountain Rescue Team.

Now rescue teams in East Lancs have welcomed the idea and are looking into finding out more about the system.

The trial involved 350 people from 25 countries, including US, Africa and Europe, who acted as ‘virtual’ mountain rescue search assistants looking at images beamed back by the drone.

They correctly identifed walkers with a dog and a ‘missing’ person within five minutes of the operation going live. Currently the average search and rescue mission in the area can take several hours.

Paul Egglestone, director of UCLan’s Media Innovation Studio, said: “Every year Patterdale Mountain Rescue assists hundreds of injured and missing persons in the Lake District. It can require a large team of volunteers to set out in often poor weather conditions.

“Our experiment was to see how the technology, together with ‘crowd-sourced’ help, could reduce the time taken to locate and rescue a person in distress.

“The research has clearly demonstrated how powerful this technology can be when people are persuaded to engage with it.”

Other mountain rescue teams said they are keen to hear more about it.

Andy Simpson, of Pendle and Rossendale Mountain Rescue, said: “This could be a massive improvement for us.

“If we were to have access to one of these drones we would not need to call on the police helicopter as often.”

Garry Rhodes from Bolton Mountain Rescue team, who oversee Darwen’s moorland, said: “It’s a very new idea but it sounds interesting.

“It could be a valuable tool to deploy in order to find people and its worth finding out more about its uses.”