ATRACT: A Trustworthy Robotic Autonomous system to support Casualty Triage

The Vietnam War introduced the "Golden Hour," where rapid air evacuations increased soldier survival, a standard followed by UK/US/NATO forces since. However, current conflicts (e.g., Ukraine) reveal challenges in helicopter-based casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) due to new, highly effective, low-cost missiles targeting air operations, endangering frontline medics who often operate under life-threatening conditions to prioritise and treat multiple casualties.

The proposed ATRACT system aims to address this urgent need by developing a trustworthy, drone-based, autonomous system to assist medics within the "platinum ten minutes" following trauma. ATRACT will use advanced drone and AI technologies to locate and identify casualties, assess injury severity through innovative multimodal sensing, and provide continuous monitoring and real-time information to enroute medical teams. By enhancing crew resource management and minimising time spent on the ground, ATRACT aims to increase survival rates and reduce the exposure of medics to hostile attacks. 

While AI and robotic systems (RAS) are integral across many fields, trustworthiness and transparency are often barriers to their effective deployment.  ATRACT will address these challenges by integrating ethical, legal, and military medical standards (MOD), including the WHO Surgical Checklist, ensuring the system is technically robust, ethically compliant, and provides interpretable, bias-free data to support informed decision-making. With expert oversight embedded in its development, ATRACT has the potential to transform casualty care in contested environments, contributing to significant advances in frontline healthcare delivery and yielding important health, social, and economic benefits.