COTAK News

The COTAK Program team is excited to announce the release of a series of training videos on the Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) tool. The UAS tool is a free plugin for the Android version of TAK (ATAK) that enables you to fly many common drones using ATAK and share information on the real-time location of the drone and even its camera stream with other COTAK users.

Part one of the training covers the installation of ATAK and the UAS tool software on a drone controller (or smartphone), and the process of configuring a drone and flying it using the UAS Tool.

Part two of the training covers the process of live streaming the drone’s video to other COTAK users. The COTAK team offers a live video server which routes the drone’s video stream to other users with minimal lag, and this video details how drone pilots can create a new stream using the CloudTAK user interface, how to enter stream information into the UAS Tool, and how to initiate a live stream. 

As always, our team is here to support you. If you need further assistance with UAS Tool or other drone integrations, please submit a support ticket, and one of our team members will be happy to assist you.

Story courtesy of Mesa County Search and Rescue 

On Saturday, Sept 20, at approximately 8:00 PM, Mesa County Search and Rescue was paged for a subject who became cliffed out while on Mt. Garfield. The subject reported no injuries but was unable to safely descend on their own. 

Team members and a UAV were deployed. With new technology, the drone broadcast a live video feed to all team members through COTAK (a navigation & situational awareness app), giving them real-time visuals of the subject’s position and the surrounding terrain. The subject was located just below a 20–30 foot vertical rock face on steep, unstable terrain. Due to significant rockfall risks and poor anchor options, a top-down rescue was deemed hazardous.

A bottom-up approach was initiated and contact with the subject was made at approximately 12:00 AM. The subject was given a harness and helmet and carefully guided to safety using a combination of short roping & short pitching. This approach provided the added protection of a rope belay while navigating the terrain. All team members and the subject safely exited the field by 1:00 AM.

COTAK now has the ability to display the near real-time locations of Axon body cameras! This integration allows COTAK users on your agency’s channel(s) to see the location and the callsign associated with the camera on the map in any of the TAK apps. This integration does not provide live video from the camera, and is configurable to include the location of your officers whenever their camera is turned on, or to only include the location when the camera has been set in recording mode.

Like all COTAK integrations, Axon is offered free-of-charge to COTAK member agencies, though you will need to provide us with a key to your existing Axon account for our staff to set up the integration. Your agency administrator for Axon may follow the directions here to pull the needed information to set up the integration, which they can provide to the COTAK support team by filing a ticket to request the integration at cotak.gov/support.