A Novel Approach in Developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ...

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Natural Sciences and Technology (ICNST’18) March 30 - 31, 2018, Asian University for Women, Chittagong, Bangladesh

iLab-Australia © 2018 http://ilab-australia.org/

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A Novel Approach in Developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Emergency Health Care and Response System in Bangladesh

Shamudra Dey, Zahid Hasan, Iftheker Ahmed, Rifat Hossain Pramanik

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology

Academic Building-A, SUST, Kumargaon, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh Email: [email protected]

Abstract

A project focusing on emergency health care and response system using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been carried out. The developed UAV project is integrated with the concept of ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) and Virtual Reality system is successfully implemented in it. As terrain gaps and time are major concerns of emergency health care, UAVs have the ability to change the traditional emergency health care response system. As communication devices are connected to each other in modern days, this UAV works autonomously with the help of Global Positioning System (GPS) to reach the emergency spot. Phenomenological methods have been used during the project investigation and the UAV has been experimented with different payloads in different incident places. The developed UAV and the whole approach is proved to be efficient than some of the prototype UAVs built around the globe. Virtual Reality System has been implemented in the UAV project and as a result, communication gap is hugely reduced. This holistic approach has led to more timely, efficient and economical way to save lives in emergency health situations. The details of the current model and development of such UAVs are presented in the paper. Keywords: Emergency health care, UAV, IoT, Virtual Reality, phenomenological.

1. Introduction

There is a significant innovation which is intended to be an ingenious advancement in the area of communication and transportation: the drones. As smartphones allowed developed and developing countries to advance technology in communication, the health care drone has the ability to change current traditional emergency health care response system. Drones and UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are flying machines, which don’t have pilot and different tasks can be performed in a controlled way from distance [1]. From history, it is found that UAVs were used in those cases where job was too “risky, unhygienic and dirty”. Target attacks using UAVs started in World War I and in World War II, when advance guided UAVs were used to drop bombs [2]. The paper [3] named “The Rise of Humanitarian Drone” brings the idea of “humanitarian UAV” which directly oppose to the military purpose of UAVs.

Fig. 1. Developed Emergency Health Care Response UAV.

The UAV technology has recently advanced in specific hardware, software and networks. For example, use of composite materials, GPS (Global Positioning System), Lithium-ion & Lithium-Polymer batteries have ensured more efficient flights [1, 4]. As modern communication devices are connected to each other and IoT (Internet of Things) concepts are developing, the drones are used for both protection and disaster operations and civilian,



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commercial, medical and organizational services [5][6]. In recent years, the development of Virtual Reality devices has enabled drones to serve better in humanitarian purposes like crop monitoring in agriculture [7]. From the information of American Heart Association (AHA), death risk due to heart attack is increased by 7-10% for every minute passes between failure and defibrillation [8]. It can be decreased to 3-4% per minute if CPR is applied before the arrival of defibrillator. Recent inventions have developed Automated External Defibrillator (AED) which is user friendly for UAVs and light in weight and can automatically diagnose and restart heart [9][10]. Bangladesh govt. has recently started a project “National Emergency Number” at 999, which has inspired us to run this project. The details about the developed UAV (Fig.1) will be discussed in later parts of the paper. 2. UAV Application in Health Care The non-military use of drones is mainly humanitarian which includes agriculture assistance, spraying, wildlife monitoring, forest management, water resource management, traffic control, scientific research etc. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) normally bans civilian drones because there are always chances of collision with aircrafts in airspace. According to FAA, UAVs weighting .25 kg to 25 kg are mandatory to be registered [1]. UAVs are normally used in healthcare to serve the purpose of delivery of medicines, AED (Automated External Defibrillator), blood bags, vaccines etc. [1, 4].

A project on health care UAV was run successfully by us in our university campus, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh in late February, 2017. The drone can carry medicines, blood bags, AED, vaccines etc. in a toolbox integrated in it.

To reduce costs, hardware and software of open source solutions were used to develop the system: I. 250 mm. carbon-fiber quad-copter frame with propellers. II. APM (Ardu Pilot Mega) 2.6 Micro-controller board & Neo GPS. III. Emax 1100 KV Brush Less DC Motor (BLDC) & equivalent Electronic Speed Controller (ESC) IV. 1080 pixel FPV (First Person View) camera and Eachine Transmitter-Receiver and VR (Virtual Reality) goggles. V. 3000mah 11.1 volt 3 cell LIPO Battery. VI. RadioLink AT9 2.4GHz 9CH Transmitter and RC (Remote Controlled) immersion kits. VII. Mission planner software. Total estimated cost of development and operation of such UAV is $450, which is low cost in production. Table 1. Comparison of health care UAV payload, range & speed of different models around the world.

Drone company/project Launching pad Delivery methods Payload(kg) Range(km.) Speed(kmph) Zipline Nest Paper parachute 1.36 72 144 Matternet AGS AGS 2 10 40 DHL Automated skyport Automated skyport 2 12 >64 Delft University Hospital Ground landing 4 12 97 Flirtey Airport Rope dropping 2 32 - Shahjalal University of Science & Technology

Experimental launch pad

Ground landing 1 12 >48

Table 1 discusses about the recent research projects and operations done by different health care UAVs in different countries (Zipline, Matternet, Flirtey, DHL, TU Delft & our developed project) & compares launch methods, delivery methods, payloads, ranges, speed etc., which includes our project [1][11]. It is seen that our developed drone was efficient than some of the models developed around the world. Note that, these numbers provided on the table are based on research information in papers and websites but as lithium battery is rapidly becoming more efficient, there is always a chance of improvement in UAV services. 3. UAV Delivery Model of Our Project The Hong et.al [12] in his paper talked about a sole UAV based transportation method for urban areas by positioning recharge stations and creating communication paths around obstacles. In the completed project, a phenomenon was considered, where emergency medical supplies are to be delivered to a distant place and traditional ambulance service is not the best option. As to the plan of our project, the area was divided into number of small zones, which can be considered as a village. Model All the data provided here are collected from the fly done in our university and the phenomenological methods were adopted. The points plot (in kilometre) in the graph are calculated from a reference point (0,0) (Fig. 2). Here, Vu is the velocity of UAV and Va is the velocity of ambulance.



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Zonal service point of UAV & ambulance is (x1, y1)= (0.5,0.6) & incident place co-ordinate is (x2, y2) = (1.8,1.9). Due to the current road infrastructure and terrain gaps, the traditional ambulance service must have to go through the point (x3, y3) = (2.1, 0.75). For simplicity of the calculation, simple straight line pathway had been considered & planned in the Mission Planner open source software (Fig. 3). d= √ {(xn – xn-1)2 + (yn – yn-1)2}, where, n= 2, 3, 4 … (1) Here, using the above straight line formula, distance covered by UAV, du< distance covered by ambulance, da. Due to the common traffic congestion, it is easy to consider velocity such, Vu>Va. It is known that, response time=distance/velocity. So, the response time of UAV, tu > response time of ambulance, ta. The model was tried to keep as simple as possible in nature. The model may have weak points as several assumptions have been made. But it should be agreed that, as researchers are working to improve the speed of UAV, the effectiveness of UAV in Emergency Medical Service (EMS) is increasing. The following two figures show the methodology of the completion of the project.

Fig. 2. Plot of experimental data in radar graph.

Fig. 3. Route planning of UAV in Mission Planner Software. 4. Implementation of Virtual Reality System & IoT Concept The Fig. 4 shows the system architecture of the implementation of Virtual Reality in our project. The paper 7 is about a project of Virtual Reality system to monitor diseases of strawberry with drones [7]. Same types of technological concept can be used to serve the purpose of emergency health care situations. In our UAV, a 1080 pixel HD (High Definition) FPV camera with Eachine TS832 RC832 Booscam 5.8G 32 CH (channel) 250mW FPV transmitter receiver 7.4-16.4 Volt and Eachine Virtual Reality compatible goggles was used. The idea is to ensure better treatment to patient by emergency health care drone as the patient can be observed by the doctor from distance with better experience. In tele-control scheme (Fig.5), which is basically obtained from IoT concept, the operators must continuously operate and monitor Health Care UAV. Subsequently, the UAV accepts command tasks from human operator to move the UAV from its initial position to its prescribed goal, and this task planning relies mostly on the human supervision. Nevertheless the interaction between human operator and Health Care UAV allows the operator to feel the remote environment [10].

Zonalservicepoint(0.5,0.6)

Incidentpoint(1.8,1.9)

Ambulancewaypoint(2.1,0.75)

00.51

1.52

2.5



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Fig.4. System Architecture of the Virtual Reality System of the Project.

Fig.5. Implementation of IoT concept in the project.

Fig.6. CAD Design of Our Future Model of Health Care UAV. 5. Discussions & future research possibilities UAVs, along with recent developments of Smartphone technology are enabling improving countries throughout the world to go ahead with emergency health care transportation to distant areas even with the lack of infrastructure and terrain gaps [1]. Emergency ambulance services, even in modern cities are often hampered by extreme weather and city congestion. UAV technology and its hardware and software components like GCS, GPS, Lithium batteries etc. are becoming available and they are rapidly developing. It is hoped that the project work will inspire to grow other humanitarian application algorithms using technology of UAV. Besides, in this paper, a very simple mathematical model of the implementation of our project was provided. It can be represented in a better way in future with actual road network. In this project, the main focus was on the least time response by health care UAV in a complete planned path. Here, we have provided the CAD (Computer Aided Design) model of our future design which is done in SOLIDWORKS platform and it has enabled us to think about the development of such a landing gear in future, which will be helpful to physically challenged people (Fig. 6). We require more research to implement this in our project. We can also consider our current Health Care UAV partnering with ambulance robot [10,13].



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6. Conclusions The outcomes of the research project will contribute in better way to save someone’s life during emergency medical situations and reduce the burden of rescuers to find important medications nearby so that can bring more practical and commercial value to our society and human civilization. References

1. Judy E. Scott, Carlton H. Scott, Drone Delivery Models for Healthcare, Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2017.

2. Thomas Rootwelt, Ambulance Drones in Norway A Stakeholder Analysis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Production and Quality Engineering.

3. K. B. Sandvik and K. Lohne, “The rise of the humanitarian drone: giving content to an emerging concept,” Millennium-Journal of International Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 145–164, 2014.

4. O. Khazan, A Drone to Save the World, The Atlantic, 2016. 5. Naser Hossein Motlagh, Tarik Taleb, and Osama Arouk, Low-Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles-Based Internet of

Things Services: Comprehensive Survey and Future Perspectives, IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 3, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2016.

6. S. W. Loke, “The Internet of Flying-Things: Opportunities and challenges with airborne fog computing and mobile cloud in the clouds,” Dept. Comput. Sci. Inf. Technol., La Trobe Univ., Melbourne VIC, Australia, Jul. 2015, accessed on Jun. 4, 2016. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.04492

7. R. Rieder et al. / A Virtual Reality System to Monitor and Control Diseases in Strawberry Crops with Drones: a project, International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (iEMSs), 7th Intl. Congress on Env. Modelling and Software, San Diego, CA, USA, Daniel P. Ames, Nigel W.T. Quinn and Andrea E. Rizzoli (Eds.), http://www.iemss.org/society/index.php/iemss-2014-proceedings.

8. M. F. Hazinski and J. M. Field, “2010 american heart association guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care science,” Circulation, vol. 122, no. Suppl, pp. S639–S946, 2010.

9. L. A. Cobb, C. E. Fahrenbruch, T. R. Walsh, M. K. Copass, M. Olsufka, M. Breskin, and A. P. Hallstrom, “Influence of cardiopulmonary resuscitation prior to defibrillation in patients with out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation,” Jama, vol. 281, no. 13, pp. 1182–1188, 1999.

10. H. Samani, R. Zhu: Robotic AED Ambulance for Emergency Medical Service in Smart Cities, IEEE Access Journal, Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2514263.

11. A. Tilley, UPS Experiments With Drone Delivery In Partnership With Zipline, Forbes, 2016. 12. I. Hong, M. Kuby and A. Murray, Deviation flow refueling location model for continuous space: commercial drone

delivery system for urban area, 13th International Conference on GeoComputation, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, 2015.

13. J.-Y. Choi and S.-G. Kim, ``Collaborative tracking control of UAV-UGV,'' Int. J. Mech., Aerosp., Ind., Mechatron. Manuf. Eng., vol. 6, no. 11, pp. 2487-2490, 2012.

A Novel Approach in Developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ...

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