[herbig]

A couple of people hating on this. Despite the obvious fact that you can in fact get lost on a trail, the progress of autonomous rescue drones doesn't just end at following trails.

Once they're able to detect trails and follow them looking for people, the next step would be detecting signs of where they might have wandered off trail, or (especially in snowy conditions) detecting and following where they have started their own trail.

[devindotcom]

You can also be injured, left behind, faint, stop to help someone, etc.

A drone that can follow a trail that changes quite a bit over the year and is trained to recognize obvious trail signals (jacket on tree, reflectors) or human voices offtrail as it passes ("help! over here!") would be excellent. A drone pass at closing time might become a standard precaution and CYA thing for parks, plus they can give trail notes like where it's poorly marked, blockage and collapses, and so on.

[samcheng]

Ugh, I hope not! Nothing like ruining the joy of alpenglow with the high-pitched buzz of the nanny state.

[onion2k]

To be fair, the wilderness being littered with dead bodies would probably ruin it more.

[samcheng]

It isn't, though!

The only wilderness place I know that is 'littered with dead bodies' is Mt. Everest. And that is from hypoxia and exposure, not getting lost.

EDIT: Hmm, and maybe Aokigahara Suicide Forest in Japan. Also not from getting lost.