Binks had a background in writing software for MR teams and had previously worked on a program called MR Maps, which allowed teams to track their members in near real-time, based on regular pings from their radios.

Roach and Binks realized that MR Maps could be used to analyze images taken by drones, rather than simply inputting specific colors to search for. By counting the number of pixels of a particular color, and then highlighting clusters of unusual colors, the software could effectively locate missing persons in dense or rugged terrain.