Open Collaborative Platform for Multi-Drones to Support Search and Rescue Operations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please check the attached file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you very much for your interesting manuscript! Personal opinion is that such platform would be great help for SAR missions. In my opinion your work should be published, however, after some major revisions which i hope will not be a problem for you take into account. Below, i will describe in details my concerns:
- The title is mentioning an open collaborative platform, moreover, it is mentioned through the whole manuscript, however, after reading it there are many questions left for the reader. It is not clear almost anything for the platform itself in terms of architecture and infrastructure that it is working on? Your main presentation seems more like application of the Krypto module in a collaborative mode in multiple devices. So i expect that in detail explanation on how the platform is built to be present your manuscript. In the end, these leads to some of the main goals when publishing research - sharing and reproducibility of the work.
- In addition to the previous, it is not clear who would be able to define SAR locations? Some assigned authority/administrator or it is open for any user?
- In the same way, you labelled it as open, but it is not clear which part is open? can an user access it, check its source code, modify it... ? I think you should share links to repositories and so on. None on the basic principles of open are noted in your manuscript.
- The same is also valid for the Krypto module, where couple of times you have mentioned that the source code is freely open, but you have included any sources from where this can be done?
In my opinion the previously bullet points should be definitely taken into account or otherwise in my opinion the title does not correspond to the content, nor the name Open Collaborative Platform.
Below i will list some several minor issues i found:
- seems that both authors share the same affiliation, so i do not see the point of creating two same institutions (after the title)
- lines 11 and 28 - cerate? did you mean create?
- l31 wildfires without W
- l15 sniff out - shouldn't it be in quotation marks as it is not real sniff ?(personal opinion, can be neglected if you do not agree)
- Section 3.3.1 - i think it is worthy to be discussed the Z-component of the flight planning with multiple UAVs. You are discussing their flight paths in a planner manner but not the flying altitude?
- Section 3.3.1 - In my opinion needs to be addressed - what are the measures implemented for crash avoidance in multiple drones covering the same area ?
- l.359 - (some doubt that occurred to me while reading, probably can be interesting in a discussion?) - you are mentioning the Euclidean distance computation for return to home, but to me it is seems that this implies the shortest path, which in some scenarios would not be possible due to some obstacles (i.e. trees). Doesn't then this approach underestimates the distance and time, therefore the power need to RTH?
Please add a discussion section and extend the conclusions.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Taken overall, the authors reasonably addressed all the comments I had given, and the manuscript was revised accordingly.
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for taking into account my comments!
Regards.
