PRE2017 4 Groep4

Subject

The subject we choice is: Emergency delivery drone

Objectives

The primary goal is making a drone that is capable of bringing lightweight medical supplies and equipment to a place of emergency. This means that the robot will need to be fast, able to deal with/avoid obstacles autonomously and have enough carrying capacity to bring along the medical supplies.

Introduction

In case of medical emergency it can often happen that bystanders are not able to help the victim because of a lack of proper equipment. In such a scenario it would be useful to be able to deliver this equipment to the site of emergency even before medical professionals can reach it. This is a problem where drones could provide a solution.

The main advantage of using drones for this is that they can almost completely ignore traffic. An ambulance can get slowed down if there’s heavy traffic, while a drone can fly straight over it. This means that drones could have a significant speed advantage compared to other means of transport.

Using drones also has limits. Regulations put limits on their use(most importantly where they can be used and how heavy a drone may be). A drone is also only capable of carrying objects of limited size and weight, so it won’t be possible to carry any heavy medical equipment around.

A drone can of course not carry any persons, so an ambulance still needs to be sent. But having medical supplies/equipment on the spot for bystanders to use even before the ambulance can arrive can in some cases improve the odds of survival.

Users

The primary user group will be medical professionals, since they will be using the medical supplies carried, and will also be loading and unloading the drone. The main issue here is that loading and unloading the drone needs to be a quick and intuitive procedure. Similarly, telling the drone where the emergency is also needs to be done quickly.

Bystanders of an emergency are a primary user group as well, since the drone might at times be able to arrive before medical professionals. In such a situation, the unloading of the drone would need to be doable/intuitive for them as well, even if they’ve never seen such a drone before. Note that it is not useful for the drone to provide any further guidance on using the medical supplies. If a drone has arrived at a place of emergency, the bystander will presumably already be in (telephonic) contact with a responder who will be far more capable of giving instructions relevant to the specific emergency than the drone will be able to.

A secondary user group is the public at large: the drone will pass through public spaces while moving towards an emergency, so it should be clear what the drone is doing when it is passing by.

Approach

• Meetings each week in which we summarize what everyone has done and what problems some occur.
• Talk about how to handle the problems
• divide work for the next meeting
• Give everyone a responsibility and tasks for the next meeting.

Milestones

• Parts ordered
• Parts delivered
• Parts tested
• Basic frame finished
• Prototype
• Frame and hardware coupled
• Quadcopter lifting off the ground
• Quadcopter stabilising
• Quadcopter directional movement
• Quadcopter semi-autonomous

Deliverables

• Requirements
• Parts List
• Physics document
• User Manual
• Logbook
• Planning
• Tracing of requirements to hardware and software
• Final document (including code)

Planning

Planning Group 4