PRE2016 4 Groep5

Group 5: AED Drone from TU Delft

• 1. Thom Konijnenberg 0945007 t.j.c.konijnenberg (At) student.tue.nl
• 2. Rense Nijenkamp 0960705 r.c.j.nijenkamp (At) student.tue.nl
• 3. Nikolay Stoyanov 0980910 n.stoyanov (At) student.tue.nl
• 4. Wessel van der Heijden 0951686 g.w.v.d.heijden (At) student.tue.nl
• 5. Patrick Shaw 0900654 Pthom.shaw (At) gmail.com

Introduction

Every week, 300 cases of cardiac arrest will happen outside of the hospital in the Netherlands. Because it happens outside of the hospital, the survivability rate is less than 10%. This rate is tremendously low for a country in the EU. These rates are caused by the fact that after a cardiac arrest, only an AED or a defibrillator can revive the heart and with every minute passing, the chance of survival drop with another 10%. incident. This high number of casualties is caused by the relatively slow response time of emergency services (10 minutes). Brain death and permanent death start to occur in just 4 to 6 minutes.

However, the AED Drone from TU Delft is a solution for the slow response time. Because the drone is carrying an AED, it eliminates the need for a person to retrieve an EAD, which is very time costly. The drone is faster as an ambulance as well, due to the high speeds it can reach. Furthermore, as the air is much more open space than the roads have, the drone will not be limited by any form of traffic. The drone can reach the patient faster than any emergency service can and revive a person before the crucial minutes are over. However, the Drone from Delft is just a proto-type and the employment of Drones are blooming in this decade.

It is of upmost importance that the drone lands as fast as possible and to be able to land everywhere. However, the TU Delft only tested the prototype in optimal situations where there were no external factors. The goal of this project is to learn how people react to drones when it tries to land as fast as possible and as close as possible to the patient.

In order to show the assumptions that have been taken, a scenario is made which shows the difference between the implementation of a drone and without the implementation A man, aged 54, is taking a stroll through the centrum of Eindhoven on a hot Saturday. Suddenly, he is feeling unwell and decides to rest on a nearby bench. However, as he is sitting down, he feels a great pain coming from his chest. The pain is so severe that he can not cry out for help and collapses on the bench. In total, thirty seconds have been passed since he collapsed. A nearby bystanders tries to make contact but fails to achieve so and therefore decides to call the emergency number. A crowd starts to form around the collapsed man. The call is made and contact is established with the emergency contact center. On this moment, one minute has passed already while the bystander starts to reanimate the man.

• The closest ambulance is contacted and has been giving orders to move to the location of the emergency. However, the traffic is terrible and causes the ambulance to loose precious seconds. With great hurry, the ambulance tries to move as fast as possible through the crowd but struggles a bit due to the amount of people that have to move out of the way. In total the ambulance took 6 minutes to arrive at the scene, making the total amount 7 minutes. They try to revive the man with the use of a defibrillator. The man has a survivability rate of less than 50%.

• Another bystander who notices the call to the emergency center tried to help by retrieving the nearest AED and using it on the collapsed man. The bystander pulls out a phone and tries to locate the nearest AED. This takes 1 minute as not every AED on the map is available in the weekend. The bystander starts running in order to reach the AED, located 350 meters from the emergency location, on time. The running, retrieving, and running back will take another 5 minutes. In total 7 minutes have passed and the AED has to be used through the help of a bystander

• The emergency center sends the closest drone to the emergency location. Due to the high-speed of the drone, it reaches the location within one minute and starts to land slowly. When contact with the ground is made, less than 3 minutes have passed. The AED has to be used through the help of a bystander.

Problem statement

Speed is one of the most important factor in saving lives. This has been mentioned in the introduction and will affect the problem statement as well. Currently, the drone is used in optimal situations, which are not present in every situation. For this project, the landing of the drone will be tackled. Landing a drone can be done in multiple ways, making great use of the speed the drone has. However, the landing will not be done on a landing site, landing will be done when there is a crowd of people.

There is not much research done on how people feel about drones when they are up-close. If a drone must land as fast as possible, it will try to arrive at a low altitude in order to have a low amount of time needed to land. However, to what extent does this influence the behavior of the people who are close to the drone. A drone is different than an ambulance, as it does not show a predictable course when it is moving towards a location. Furthermore, the downstream of wind is a feeling people are not experienced with and may cause fear.

Because the drone is not an object people are used to, an experiment will be done in order to see the effect the drone has on people when it needs to land as fast as possible. If people will move unpredictable, they may locate themselves in positions that are unfavorable for the landing of the drone. More information about the experiment can be found in the experiment plan.

Approach

• Literature research.

While there is not much information available about how people react when a drone is trying to land as fast as possible, a lot of information is available about the TU Delft drone. When the capabilities of the drone are known, ideas can be formed on how the experiment needs to be done and if adjustments are necessary for the future. The state of the art can be researched, which will give a lot of insight on the possibilities the drone may have.

Despite the lack information regarding the relations between human and drone, there is a lot of information and references which show the proper base for the experiment that is going to be conducted. Other groups have conducted experiments, which we will be able to use to create ouw own experiment.

• Experiment

An experimentation on how people will react when a drone is close by. As mentioned above, there is not much information regarding how people react when drones are close but this give us a base of approach. The experiment will give insight on how people tend to react when the drone is flying above them. Furthermore, this will give information about the personal space one feels when a drone is flying above a person. These kind of experiments should result in proper data which would allow us to what extend a drone can fly without creating any hindrance for nearby bystanders or be hindered by the reaction of bystanders.

• Environment

The project is going to be focused on the environment aspect. The people who are not part of the crisis situation will have an effect on how the drone must reach its location. Therefore it is important to learn and know how the environment, or the crowd in this research, will be affected.

AED Map

Based on the AED map, made by the Red cross, one can pinpoint every location of an AED. However, one can conclude that there are certain area’s which are not covered by AEDs. From every AED, a circle is drawn with a radius of 500 meters. This is based on the distance one could access the situation, locate the nearest AED, retrieve it, and apply the AED to the patient. The 500 meters will take almost 10 minutes, giving the patient a chance of less than 10%. The biggest issue is still the time it takes to return with an AED. In order to get the survivability to reasonable numbers, the time must be made shorter. To get an response time within 3 minutes, which are called the golden minutes, is the main goal, as after 3 minutes brain damage will be caused. (link to Nikolay and picture of Alec mont). Therefore, help needs to arrive quickly in order to make a full recovery. The 500 meter are in reality little to 50 meter if one wants to apply the AED in the golden minutes.

For the current map, an area of 28 square kilometers has been taken, in which 60 AEDs are visible. These 60 cover about 50% of the area. Furthermore, of these 60 AEDs, about 40% are accessible at any given time, while the remainder is limited to the business hours of its location. Placing more AEDs in strategical places is an costly project. Most of the AEDs are over the price range of 1000 Euro and need an outside protector, otherwise it will be limited to the opening hours of its location. At the moment, an AED is placed when the owner feels the need to buy one or when it is a public building. This causes area’s which are used for homes and not for businesses or public buildings to be left without an AED. It can be seen on the map that those areas are usually more than 1 kilometer removed from the nearest AED. This will be almost certain death.

Because the time in which a cardiac arrest happens and the time a person calls the emergency number is already so costly on the patients live, a faster system must be used. The AED Drone has a response time of 1 minute inside its 2 kilometer radius. Because of this response time, the chances of survivability are greatly improved. At the moment, there is no better solution as the AED drone brings help at an unraveled speed, helping the patient in the golden minutes. This is caused by the speed of the drone and lack of traffic it finds on its path. Placing AED Drones around Eindhoven, will not only be the cheaper solution, compared to strategically placing AEDs everywhere, it will bring the needed equipment in the most critical minutes of the patients life.

Objectives

• How does the crowd react to a drone landing from above.
• What protocol should people follow if the drone is in use.
• How should the drone behave to not disturb the crowd to a large extend.
• What are the factors when landing a drone.
• How can the landing speed of a drone be improved.

USE

User

The users for the AED drone are different than users normally are, as the users from the AED drone are not prepared and is mostly forced upon them. When one comes across a collapsed person who has cardiac arrest, the user has to dail the emergency number and a drone will be send towards the location using the GPS of the person who called the emergency number. After a couple of minutes, when the AED Drone has arrived, further instructions will be provided, as is the norm with an AED. This is one user for the AED drone, the one helping the patient. However, there are more users involved in this matter. Obviously, there is the patient himself. Even though the patient does not use the product, he has the most interest in the product being used well, since it's his life that is on the line. There is also the operator behind the drone who will send the drone and assist in the process of applying the AED after the drone has arrived. Another important user is the emergency services. The drone itself can be considered as a part of the ambulance system. The government and insurance companies are also indirect users of the drone. Also the drone will need maintenance so the people who provide should also be considered as users.

Primary user

• People, who are going to make the phone call and provide the needed assistance to the people described on the next line.
• People, suffering from heart attack and on which the AED will be used.
• People, who will operate the drone and provide assistance to the user who is making the call.

Secondary user

• Hospital - The AED drone in function and usability is similar to an ambulance, therefore it is provided that the drone is connected to the hospital(emergency services).

Tertiary user

• Government - The government is a big factor as it will introduce the AED drone as part of the healthcare system.
• Insurance - The AED drone is going to save lives and is connected to the health of the people, therefore the insurance has a role.
• Maintenance - The AED drone is fundamentally a mechanical tool and will need experts who will ensure that it always performs as needed.

Society

For society, this idea has a lot of impact. When a drone is used to help people survive a heart attack or other urgent healthcare problems, there are a number of issues which need to be dealt with:

• Privacy. Should the drone be able to access all locations? For example: entering someone’s garden in order to get to the victim. This is very important to the research because we are trying to save lives. However, this can't be achieved without thinking about the people. They need to specify what is acceptable for a drone. Taking a shortcut through another person's garden might increase the chances of survival for a patient, but the privacy of the bystander is at risk.
• Crowd control. What are the effects on a crowd of people when a drones passes by at high speeds? For example: a drone could cause a lot of panic within a crowd. Again, the same principle as before applies here. How far can the drone go in order to save lives? It should always be safe, but it should also handle a group of people with enough caution, but also have enough speed to get to its destination quickly.
• Parking. How can a parking space be created? How can you get a group of people to make room in an efficient way?

These three main issues focus on society’s opinions and behaviour. This needs to be analyzed by investigating completed studies on a variety of subjects regarding society’s view towards robotics used for healthcare. It is also important to look at the current rules that apply for emergency services such as the ambulance helicopter.

Enterprise

The main enterprises that will be impacted by this idea are:

• Insurance companies
• Hospitals and government
• Drone manufacturers

These enterprises have different interests when it comes to this idea. Whereas the hospitals, government and drone manufacturers might want there to be as many drones like this as possible, the insurance companies might not want this to happen. At the end of the day, the insurance companies main objective is to make profit. Having some expensive drones save lives might be more costly than deploying a “normal” ambulance, which will be more beneficial for the insurance companies. However, the survival of a patient might be worth a lot more than the costs of the drone. A person's life can't really be expressed in terms of money, so there are conflicting interests.

Issues

The ambulance drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle which means that it will need to use a camera in order for it to be operated. The drone will also move in crowded environments and will eventually interact with people. Therefore there are many issues concerning it’s behaviour. There should be rules concerning the ambulance drone, however there are currently no rules specifically for an unmanned ambulance drone, and therefore the drone will have to abide by the rules of consumer or business drones, which will currently prevent this project from taking off for real use. The good side is that there is a possibility that this project can be approved and have exceptional rules concerning it. However, for it to be approved, the drone must overcome dangers and ethical issues which will be discussed in the following sections.

Privacy

The camera itself brings a lot of issues concerning privacy. It is easy for a drone with a camera to gather different kinds of data. If a person is inputting his email on a computer, a drone can easily hover behind him unnoticed whilst recording it. Then it is needless to say that the person who has access to the video can without trouble learn the credentials of this email. Also people do not want to be seen what they are doing in their homes which can be unnoticably done by a drone. Drones can also be used for gathering economical data such as who are the people shopping on a given street . The drone’s purpose however is not to use the camera with such intentions and therefore some rules regarding the drones should be omitted and concern the ambulance drone. Even if such a drone may sometimes endanger invade the privacy of a person, that camera is needed for the drone to deliver life-saving functionality which is a reasonable trade-off.

Criminality

According to an article a man has shot down a drone which was flying over his yard. That same man has been sued by the owner of the drone and the judge ruled the man to be innocent. However during the case there has been discussion of the height at which the drone was flying. Which leads to the conclusion that if the drone has been flying high enough the man would not be legally allowed to shoot down the drone. The drone is supposed to fly high above the ground and at reasonable speed which means that people who try to shoot down or steal such a drone will not have done so with concern for their privacy, but with violent intentions and should be brought to justice for destroying/stealing government property.

Safety

There are also many issues concerning the safety of such a drone. This is why there are many rules to prohibit drones in many places. Many of these rules have been stated in the code of conduct for drones, however there are a couple of modifications that are needed for the AED.

The current regulations for drone do not allow drones to be flown over cities, buildings and people. However if all the regulations for regular drones are applied to the AED drone the project will be stopped. More importantly this would also be true for ambulances or police cars, but the society has decided that those privileges are a good trade off for a more secure environment. The AED drone will be considered safe to fly over crowded environment and will be operated in such a manner that it will not provide any privacy issues within the society. The purpose of the drone would be to fly from A to B as fast as possible and will therefore cause no problems, apart from when it is landing, but this is a good trade-off in order to increase the survival rate from heart attacks.

Liability

If AED drones were allowed to fly in cities, we get the following problem of who is responsible for the drones. since these drones are autonomous we have no direct control over where they fly, and thus there is always a possibility of the drone crashing into objects. There are many studies about autonomous robots and their liability [reference]. Currently we do not know who is responsible if such a drone crashes, which will be more clear if there are any regulations in place.

So even though there are a lot of problems when it comes to implementing the AED drone into society, an exception needs to be made. When it comes to saving lives, the law suddenly is not that important anymore. For example: an ambulance on the road is allowed to cross a red light at an intersection if it is in a hurry to get to a patient or a hospital. The same principle can apply to the AED drone. If all laws are taken into account, the AED drone simply would not be able to exist. It would be illegal, meaning the project is dead. Since this is a shame and we believe there is actually a future with the drone in it, we assume that the AED drone is allowed to break the law in cases of emergency. What's left to find out is how far the drone can go with this. The next step is to find out what a group of people think is acceptable behaviour for the AED drone in order to save lives.

Theory

- Coronary Heart Disease -

Heart attacks most often occur as a result of coronary heart disease (CHD), also called coronary artery disease. CHD is a condition in which a waxy substance called plaque builds up inside the coronary arteries. These arteries supply oxygen-rich blood to your heart. When plaque builds up in the arteries, the condition is called atherosclerosis. The buildup of plaque occurs over many years. Eventually, an area of plaque can rupture (break open) inside of an artery. This causes a blood clot to form on the plaque's surface. If the clot becomes large enough, it can mostly or completely block blood flow through a coronary artery. If the blockage isn't treated quickly, the portion of heart muscle fed by the artery begins to die. Healthy heart tissue is replaced with scar tissue. This heart damage may not be obvious, or it may cause severe or long-lasting problems.

- Coronary Artery Spasm -

A less common cause of heart attack is a severe spasm (tightening) of a coronary artery. The spasm cuts off blood flow through the artery. Spasms can occur in coronary arteries that aren't affected by atherosclerosis.

Common heart attack signs and symptoms include:

• Chest discomfort, mild pain
• Coughing
• Nusea
• Vomiting
• Crushing chest pain
• Pressure tightness, pain, squeezing or aching in the chest or arms that spreads to the neck, jaw, or back
• Dizziness
• Dyspnea (shortness of breath)
• Face seems gray
• A feeling of terror that your life is coming to its end
• Feeling really awful (general feeling)
• Restlessness
• Feeling clammy and sweaty
• Shortness of breath

Heart attack risk factors include:

• Age. Men age 45 or older and women age 55 or older are more likely to have a heart attack than are younger men and women.
• Tobacco. Smoking and long-term exposure to secondhand smoke increase the risk of a heart attack.
• High blood pressure. Over time, high blood pressure can damage arteries that feed your heart by accelerating atherosclerosis. High blood pressure that occurs with obesity, smoking, high cholesterol or diabetes increases your risk even more.
• High blood cholesterol or triglyceride levels. A high level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol) is most likely to narrow arteries. A high level of triglycerides, a type of blood fat related to your diet, also ups your risk of heart attack. However, a high level of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol) lowers your risk of heart attack.
• Diabetes. Insulin, a hormone secreted by your pancreas, allows your body to use glucose, a form of sugar. Having diabetes — not producing enough insulin or not responding to insulin properly — causes your body's blood sugar levels to rise. Diabetes, especially uncontrolled, increases your risk of a heart attack.
• Family history of heart attack. If your siblings, parents or grandparents have had early heart attacks (by age 55 for male relatives and by age 65 for female relatives), you may be at increased risk.
• Lack of physical activity. An inactive lifestyle contributes to high blood cholesterol levels and obesity. People who get regular aerobic exercise have better cardiovascular fitness, which decreases their overall risk of heart attack. Exercise is also beneficial in lowering high blood pressure.
• Obesity. Obesity is associated with high blood cholesterol levels, high triglyceride levels, high blood pressure and diabetes. Losing just 10 percent of your body weight can lower this risk, however.
• Stress. You may respond to stress in ways that can increase your risk of a heart attack.
• Illegal drug use. Using stimulant drugs, such as cocaine or amphetamines, can trigger a spasm of your coronary arteries that can cause a heart attack.
• A history of preeclampsia. This condition causes high blood pressure during pregnancy and increases the lifetime risk of heart disease.
• A history of an autoimmune condition, such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and other autoimmune conditions can increase your risk of having a heart attack.

The Drone in use

The AED drone’s design has be narrowed down to 2 choices:

The AED drone will respond to phone calls regarding heart attacks nearby. It works as follows: A person (close to the person suffering from heart attack) calls the given number. He gets instructions on where the drone will arrive. Parallel to that an AED drone is dispatched to the calling peron’s location. The drone is supposed to autonomously travel at 200 km/h to the target location. However currently there is no collusion avoidance which works flawlessly at the target speed, so the drones may need to be operated manually until that technology is created. When the drone arrives it is picked up by the calling person who is supposed to bring it close to the person suffering from heart attack. The drone itself is equipped with a camera and microphone so the interaction between the operator and the people at the spot is achieved easily. After the drone is placed next to the patient, an able person is supposed to attach the defibrillator in the following way:

Since the AED drone has a camera and operator he is the one who times the shock pauses needed. After a while, hopefully the person suffering from heart attack has recovered, an ambulance arrives at the site. That is when the AED drone is no longer needed, and is returned to it’s base.

State of the Art

AED

The drone should carry an AED. An AED is not very heavy or big, so it should be easy to put this inside the drone and fly with it without any issues.

Navigation

For the purpose of navigating the drone to a specified location, a gps would be needed. Currently GPSis accurate to about 5 meters in the horizontal direction, however the european Galileo navigation system is accurate to 1 meter, and 1 cm for the army. This is more than accurate enough to fly the drone to a destination. However, what GPS cannot do is to modify the navigation based on obstacles in between the current position and the destination. for this, an internal system will have to be used. A camera can be used to see whether there are obstacles in the way, or additionally, there could be some sort of ultrasonic sensing where you map the area in proximity of the drone, and build an obstacle map from there. Since this is a very vague and complex idea, we will not be focussing on implementing this. We make the assumption that the drone is able to fly to its destination without having to overcome any obstacles. The path from A to B can be completed simply by using GPS

Communication

Since the drone operator would have to communicate with the AED user, the drone would need some sort of communication system. This system would include sound recording and image recording, since the operator needs to be able to see what the drone is doing, and where the drone is at all times, as well as assisting the user with the AED. To enable the operator to have access to the video and sound feeds from the drone, the drone would have to be connected to a network where it can send the feeds to the operator. In the Netherlands, the 4G coverage is 80-99% of the Netherlands depending on which network you are. 4G also has a speed of 150 mbit/s which should be more than enough to transmit full hd (1920x1080 pixels) video. This enables the communication of the drone to run smoothly if necessary. In an ideal situation, the drone will be able to reach its destination without any supervision, but if it cannot, the communication should be adequite for both the operator and the user on the ground to cooperate and make the drone perform its task.

Drone Design

- color - sound - speed - acceleration - general specs

It is important that the drone used has a distinctive color since it is an emergency service just like an ambulance. The drone used by the University of Delft is painted in exactly the same colors as a normal ambulance on the road, and we agree with this design. If the AED drone gets implemented into society, the task it performs will be very similar to the job of an ambulance: save as many lives as possible. Therefore it's not that hard to think that the AED drone will be part of the emergency services regarding healthcare, so giving the drone the same color design as the ambulance is the right choice. Another important part of the drone's appearance is the sound it makes. When it comes to this characteristic, we believe the drone should not make the same sound as an ambulance. This is the case because when one hears the sirens of an ambulance, the person immediately has an idea of what to expect. The person expects a car to appear. However, if one hears the same sound approaching but it comes from a drone instead of an ambulance, the person will still expect to see an ambulance. This has a big impact on the person's behaviour, which is not wat we want. One should react differently to a drone than to an ambulance. Also, when one hears the sound, they should know right away what to expect. Therefore, we want the drone to make a clearly distinguishable sound from an ambulance. A sound which notifies the people in the area that something is going on, which a unique melody and tone to it so that it cannot be confused with the sound of an ambulance.

Other specs which matter when it comes to the drone are the actual performace specifications. The acceleration of the drone used in the Delft project is 18 m/s2 and its top speed is 135 km/h. This is just the protoype, however. The final product is destined to have an acceleration of 25 m/s2 and the top speed will be 200 km/h. For now, we will use the specs from the prototype, since this is already built and verified. This means the drone will reach its top speed in just over 2 seconds and it is able to reach its destination a kilometer away in just 26.7 seconds when operating at maximum speed. Victims can be reached very quickly with these specifications already, but as mentioned before, the actual product will have even better performance, so even more lives can be saved.

The drone needs to carry an AED with it, so it needs to have enough thrust to be able to carry this extra weight with it. The prototype is able to carry a weight of 6 kg's, but the finalized product will be able to carry a weight of 8 kg's. Since an AED weighs only about 3 kg's, the drone could even carry other items on board such as a regular first aid kit.

Personal Space Regarding Drones

Planning

Milestones

• First presentation: 1-05-2017
• Second presentation: 26-06-2017
• Finish defining problem statement: 3-05-2017
• Finish literature study: 22-05-2017
• Finish model: 11-06-2017
• Finish Experiment: 11-06-2017
• Finish Wiki: 18-06-2017

Gantt Diagram

Weekly updates.

New Planning for the final 5 weeks

Week 4: Make arrangements for the experiments (drone, room, people, pick a date for next week)

• Do try-out experiments (try the experiments on ourselves)
• Improve experiment plan (make it very explicit, step by step)
• Processing results (hypothesis, what to do when we actually get the results?)
• Check our wiki with the original planning

Week 5 (only Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday):

• Perform experiments on test people
• Analyze first data

Week 6:

• Perform experiments if we don’t have enough data yet
• Analyze and process data

Week 7:

• Complete analysis of the experiments and connect the correct conclusions to them.

Week 8:

• Finalizing everything (presentation, wiki, evaluation, follow up research)

Week 9:

• presentation

Experiment Plan

Code of Conduct for Drones

When dealing with an ambulance on the road, there are certain rules that apply to that situation to make sure the ambulance can get through the traffic as quickly as possible. Examples of this are: moving to the side of the road when an ambulance with sirens on is behind you, waiting for an ambulance to cross an intersection (even if you have the green light and the ambulance does not) and making as much room as possible in the middle of the road when you are in a traffic jam and an ambulance approaches. When it comes to drones, there are no such guidelines. This is most likely the case because drones are such a new technology. However, as drones are being used more and more, there should be a general code of conduct. This means that the drone as well as the people in its surroundings have a clear idea on how to behave.

When it comes to legislation, drones are categorized as model planes. This means the most important rules that apply are the following:

• Only fly during the day
• Make sure the drone can be seen from where you're controlling it
• Never fly above 120 metres
• Know the specifications of your drone
• Never fly above buildings, roads and people
• Never fly in no-fly zones like airports
• Always give way to other air traffic
• Never use a drone for commercial ends
• Respect other people's privacy
• Use your drone responsibly

Even though these rules give an indication of how to use drones in a legal way, it does not say anything about the situation we are trying to investigate. When looking at the rules that apply for an ambulance on the road, the most important tips for other drives were the following:

• When on a roundabout, stay on there until the ambulance has left the roundabout. This gives an easy opportunity for the ambulance to overtake you.
• Leave a lane open, this gives the ambulance a clear path through.
• Keep distance to the driver in front of you, so that you can move out of the way if necessary.
• Leave the emergency lane open.
• Don't exceed the maximum speed.

When looking at these rules, we decided to come up with the following rules for a crowd of people coming across the ambulance drone:

• Make space for the drone by moving to the right. This is essentially the same as the rule ambulances on the road use. If everyone moves to the right, there will be open space in the middle.
• Notify fellow pedestrians that a drone is coming their way. The more people know the drone is approaching, the more people will make room for it.
• When the drone wants to land near the patient, all people around the patient should make room at the patient's feet. This is important, because the drone might not be able to land as smoothly as it would like, mainly because of the fast speeds at which it moves. If the landing fails, the drone will crash onto the patient's legs instead of onto the patient's head.

These 3 simple rules will make it easier for the ambulance drone to find its way to the patient in a quick and efficient way.

Code of Conduct for Experiments

Laws and regulation in the Netherlands

• Hoofdstuk 2, Paragraaf 2. De verwerking van bijzondere persoonsgegevens
  • Artikel 16; De verwerking van persoonsgegevens betreffende iemands godsdienst of levensovertuiging, ras, politieke gezindheid, gezondheid, seksuele leven, alsmede persoonsgegevens betreffende het lidmaatschap van een vakvereniging is verboden behoudens het bepaalde in deze paragraaf. Hetzelfde geldt voor strafrechtelijke persoonsgegevens en persoonsgegevens over onrechtmatig of hinderlijk gedrag in verband met een opgelegd verbod naar aanleiding van dat gedrag.
  • Artikel 23; Het verbod om persoonsgegevens als bedoeld in artikel 16, te verwerken ten behoeve van wetenschappelijk onderzoek of statistiek is niet van toepassing voor zover:
    • het onderzoek een algemeen belang dient,
    • de verwerking voor het betreffende onderzoek of de betreffende statistiek noodzakelijk is,
    • het vragen van uitdrukkelijke toestemming onmogelijk blijkt of een onevenredige inspanning kost en
    • bij de uitvoering is voorzien in zodanige waarborgen dat de persoonlijke levenssfeer van de betrokkene niet onevenredig wordt geschaad.
• Hoofdstuk 5. Informatieverstrekking aan de betrokkene en de meldplicht bij inbreuken op de beveiliging van persoonsgegevens aan het College
  • Artikel 33
    • 1 Indien persoonsgegevens worden verkregen bij de betrokkene, deelt de verantwoordelijke vóór het moment van de verkrijging de betrokkene de informatie mede, bedoeld in het tweede en derde lid, tenzij de betrokkene daarvan reeds op de hoogte is.
    • 2 De verantwoordelijke deelt de betrokkene zijn identiteit en de doeleinden van de verwerking waarvoor de gegevens zijn bestemd, mede.
    • 3 De verantwoordelijke verstrekt nadere informatie voor zover dat gelet op de aard van de gegevens, de omstandigheden waaronder zij worden verkregen of het gebruik dat ervan wordt gemaakt, nodig is om tegenover de betrokkene een behoorlijke en zorgvuldige verwerking te waarborgen.
• Hoofdstuk 6. Rechten van de betrokkene
  • Artikel 35
    • De betrokkene heeft het recht zich vrijelijk en met redelijke tussenpozen tot de verantwoordelijke te wenden met het verzoek hem mede te delen of hem betreffende persoonsgegevens worden verwerkt. De verantwoordelijke deelt de betrokkene schriftelijk binnen vier weken mee of hem betreffende persoonsgegevens worden verwerkt.
    • Indien zodanige gegevens worden verwerkt, bevat de mededeling een volledig overzicht daarvan in begrijpelijke vorm, een omschrijving van het doel of de doeleinden van de verwerking, de categorieën van gegevens waarop de verwerking betrekking heeft en de ontvangers of categorieën van ontvangers, alsmede de beschikbare informatie over de herkomst van de gegevens.
    • Voordat een verantwoordelijke een mededeling doet als bedoeld in het eerste lid, waartegen een derde naar verwachting bedenkingen zal hebben, stelt hij die derde in de gelegenheid zijn zienswijze naar voren te brengen indien de mededeling gegevens bevat die hem betreffen, tenzij dit onmogelijk blijkt of een onevenredige inspanning kost.
    • Desgevraagd doet de verantwoordelijke mededelingen omtrent de logica die ten grondslag ligt aan de geautomatiseerde verwerking van hem betreffende gegevens.

Setup

Personal space with a drone

Problem statement

What is the vertical personal space of a person in relation to a drone?

Hypothesis

We suspect that since danger rarely comes from above, people are less used to something coming from above, and therefore the vertical personal space is greater than the horizontal personal space. Additionally, we expect that taller people have a larger vertical personal space than smaller people. Studies have shown there is such a difference in horizontal personal space (Hartnett, J. J. (1974). “Body Height, Position, and Sex as Determinants of Personal Space.”).

Aim

The aim of this experiment is to see at what distance, people are still comfortable of having a drone flying above their head.

Equipment & materials

For this experiment we will be using an AR parrot 2.0 power edition drone. The drone has a built-in height sensor. We don’t have access to the actual AED drone, however, we believe this drone is similar enough that it will produce the same results. Furthermore, we will use a camera to record and analyse the video later on, a measuring tape to measure the horizontal starting distances and finally we need some people to conduct the experiment on.

Drone:

• Weight: 420 g
• Size (length, width, height):
• Noise production (in dB):
• Downdraft:

Participants

• Number of participants

Participants are informed about the procedure and what is going to happen. They are instructed to tell the drone to stop when they feel uncomfortable/unsafe for the drone to come any closer, at which point the drone operator will stop the drone's descent and register the height of the drone from the ground. Before the experiment, the participant is asked to give some general information which might have an influence on the results:

Information beforehand (Participant)

• Length of the person
• Current field of study/occupation
• Experience with drones
• Age
• Right or left handed

The participants are placed standing up in the center. The participant is asked to look at a focus point in order to let them stand straight. After this starting position is established, the participant is requested to minimize their shoulder movement or prevent any significant changes in their posture. They are allowed to move their head around freely. (Depending on the drone, the drone is airborne before the participant stands on their spot, or after and maneuvered from a reasonable distance from the participant to the place where it will start it's descent.)

Design

Method

We will be using a within-subjects design (all subjects are exposed to every experiment) in order to allow a direct comparison of distance data from each participant. Let all participants get a close look at the drone in order to prevent that participants let the drone get closer in order to have a better look at it, since the technology is still novel . This means that during the experiment, the participant is fully aware of the drone we’re doing the experiment with. The experiment takes place outside, since no suitable open space was found indoors and it increases the realism of the experiment. The space has to have minimal windy conditions, since it could interfere with the accuracy of the experiment, due to drift of the drone. The participant is asked to be standing up during the experiment, and told to minimize their shoulder movement while conducting the experiment. The participant is free to move their head around. The drone will start 10 meters above the participant and will descend at a speed of around 0.2 m/s. The participant is requested to indicate (using the ‘stop distance technique’ , i.e. say ‘stop’.) the drone to stop when the participant feels uncomfortable. The drone operator will stop the drone once the participant has requested to stop the drone, and will document the height at which the drone has stopped. This is repeated for the different approach angles. For each approach angle, the participant indicates their preference of the approach by a Likert scale and a brief explanation for the given value. After all experiments, the participants are asked to express their feeling towards the experiment in order to evaluate if any factors might have influenced the results.

Approach angles

Personal space depends on the angle of approach. Since the angle of approach of the drone varies depending on the situation, the approach angles should not be restricted to the reference frame of the person. We use approach angles right above the person and polar coordinates {(0.5m, 0°), (0.5m, 70°), (0.5m, 90°), (0.5m, 135°), (0.5m, 180°), (0.5m, -70°), (0.5m, -90°), (0.5m, -135°), } of the person. The 70° was chosen because that is the visual range when looking straight ahead. 135° is just about out of visual range including head movement and 180° is right behind the participant. The drone descends straight down. For the horizontal distance from the person for the angles where the drone is next to the person, we use the distance found by Torta E. et al. for robot personal space for people standing up, which is 173 cm. Since we try to intersect this personal space zone, we use a horizontal distance of 0.5 meters from the person.

Approach Height

Experiments with drones and birds have shown that from an approach height of 30 meters, birds rarely react to the drone and often are undisturbed by the drone from a distance of 4 meters. Other projects have been seen to start at a distance of 7 meters for a horizontal approach. For this experiment, we start at a height of 10 meters and if results show that this is inadequate, or excessive, we will adjust this height accordingly.

Variables

There are a few variables in our experiment: angle of approach, height of the drone, and the length of the test person.

Expected result

We expect that people have a larger personal space from behind, since you can not see what is happening there. We also believe that the height might be a larger distance than the horizontal distance, since this area usually doesn't have anything above it.

Treatment of results

We will plot the results of the experiment (height and direction of approach) on a graph with x-axis the direction and the y-axis the recorded height. To indicate the trend, we use polynomial regression. For each direction, we plot a bar chart of the results of the Likert scale according to their direction of approach. The relation between the Likert and the respective comfortable drone height is then represented in a graph with an approximating polynomial.

Results

The experiment was conducted on 16 individuals. The experiment was limited to just a drone coming from straight above the participant, because of inaccurate controls for the drone. For each person, we conducted three trials. Below is a numeric summary of the data:

Numeric summary

	Mean	Standard deviation	IQR	Min	Median	Max	n
All Trials	4.020833	0.7816944	1	2.3	4	5.6	48
Trial 1	4.79375	0.5384778	0.800	4.0	4.80	5.6	16
Trial 2	4.00000	0.3829708	0.725	3.5	4.05	4.5	16
Trial 3	3.26875	0.4867837	0.725	2.3	3.20	4.0	16

Since the data contains three results for each participant, we perform three paired t-tests in order to test if we can assume that all results have the same mean (i.e., H₀: μ_t1=μ_t2=μ_t3) with a confidence of 95%.

T-test

	t	df	p
T1 and T2	8.0217	15	8.328e-07
T1 and T3	13	15	1.437e-09
T2 and T3	8.2307	15	6.056e-07

We take a confidence of 95%, which means α=0.05.

T1 and T2: We reject H₀, because p<α.

T1 and T3: We reject H₀, because p<α.

T2 and T3: We reject H₀, because p<α.

From this we conclude that the means of the three trials are not equal, which means there is a significant difference of result between trials.

Individual evasive movement

Problem statement

How and when does an individual get out of the way of a landing drone?

Hypothesis

We expect that an individual will move out of the way of a landing drone as quickly as possible, which means that they move in the direction opposite from the drone position in relation to their position. We also expect the moment the individual starts moving away from the drone will correlate to the personal space results from the personal space experiment.

Aim

The aim of this experiment is to see how an individual reacts when a drone attempts to land near a person, when coming from above. We also want to see how the direction of approach influences the direction in which the individual steps out of the way. It is also of relevance to see if the individual keeps the drone in their field of view or decides to do something different.

Equipment and materials

For this experiment we will be using an AR parrot 2.0 power edition drone. The drone has a built-in height sensor. We don’t have access to the actual AED drone, however, we believe this drone is similar enough that it will produce the same results. Furthermore, we will use a camera to record and analyse the video later on, a measuring tape to measure the horizontal starting distances and finally we need some people to conduct the experiment on.

Drone:

• Weight: 420 g
• Size (length, width, height):
• Noise production (in dB):
• Downdraft:

Method

We will be using a within-subjects design (all subjects are exposed to every experiment) in order to allow a direct comparison of distance data from each participant. For this experiment, we will be using the same participants whom have participated in the previous personal space experiment. Let all participants get a close look at the drone in order to prevent that participants let the drone get closer in order to have a better look at it, since the technology is still novel. This means that during the experiment, the participant is fully aware of the drone we’re doing the experiment with. The experiment takes place outside, since no suitable open space was found indoors and it increases the realism of the experiment. The space has to have minimal windy conditions, since it could interfere with the accuracy of the experiment. The participant is asked to be standing up at the beginning of the experiment. After the trial has started, the participant is free to move around in any way they feel comfortable. The drone starts 10 meters above the participant and will descend at a certain speed. The speed is changed in different trials, however the drone will never descend at a speed which is dangerous. The participant prior to the experiment is requested to get out of the way at any time they feel comfortable. The drone operator lands the drone and maintains a constant speed during the landing. For each approach angle, the participant indicates their preference of the approach by a Likert scale and a brief explanation for the given value. After all experiments, the participants are asked to express their feeling towards the experiment in order to evaluate if any factors might have influenced the results.

Approach angles

For this experiment, the same polar coordinates are used as in the personal space experiment. We use approach angles right above the person and polar coordinates {(0.5m, 0°), (0.5m, 70°), (0.5m, 90°), (0.5m, 135°), (0.5m, 180°), (0.5m, -70°), (0.5m, -90°), (0.5m, -135°), } of the person.

Approach Height

For consistency reasons, we start at the same height as the personal space experiment, i.e. 10 meters. If results show that this is inadequate, or excessive, we will adjust this height accordingly.

Variables

There are a few variables in our experiment: angle of approach, height of the drone, length of the test person, and speed.

Expected result

We expect a correlation in trends between the drone height and the participants moving and the found personal space in the previous experiment. We expect the actual height in this experiment to be slightly higher, since we approach the participant at higher speeds than 0.2 m/s. For the direction in which the individual moves, we expect that it is the opposite direction from which the drone is approaching the individual.

Treatment of results

The direction in which the participants move are evaluated via an agreement score. The agreement score Ar evaluates for each approach angle which movement direction was the most agreed upon :

[math]\displaystyle{ A_r = \sum_{P_i} ( \left| \frac{P_i}{P_r} \right| )^2 }[/math]

Where P_i is the subset of all identical movements and P_r is the subset of all proposed movements. Movement directions can never be completely identical, therefore we distinguish eight different directions; North (-22,5° to +22,5°), North East (+22,5° to +67,5°), East (+67,5° to +112,5°), South East (+112,5° to +157,5°), South (+157,5° to -157,5°), South West (-112,5° to -157,5°), West (-67,5° to -112,5°) and North West (-22,5° to -67,5°). To evaluate the similarities between the personal space results and the moment the person starts ‘evading’ the drone in this experiment, we perform an ANOVA test on both results to test the hypothesis that these means are significantly similar.

Results

There was a big difference in results gathered so far. What is very important to note is that most people aren't used to drones flying close to them. Therefore their behaviour changes with time: the more time a person spends close to the drone, the more he gets used to it. This shows in the results for the first test person. The drone flew above his head and descended until the test person began to feel uncomfortable. The first time we tested this, the person stopped the drone when the drone was still more than 4 metres in the air. However, in the second test, the test person let the drone come closer, at about 3.5 metres in the air. In the final couple of tests, the minimum height was reached, which was about 3 metres in the air. This was to be expected, since a person of normal length reaching out his hand in the air is still not 3 metres high. This means a person can't touch the drone when it is flying over him (unless he is jumping). The safety of the people under the drone is therefore granted if the drone is flying at a little over 3 metres in the air.

This still isn't really a reliable result, since as mentioned before, the test person got used to the drone flying near him. However, this is not the case for most people in a normal crowd, since most of these people never came close to a flying drone before. These people might still cause panic when a drone flies by so close to them, so more experiments still need to be performed to see if other test people also get used to the drone or if this was just a coincidence.

Effect of the wind

When the experiments were done, we took notice that the wind is influenced the drone too much. This has quite a big impact on the experiments as the drone could not steady fly in a straight line without having to do adjustments to the control. This meant that flying above a person and slowly moving down was an hard task to complete. A person could not really stand underneath a drone as it moved every few seconds to the side. If we tried to slowly descent, the drone would already move with the wind. Therefore, we have to reason which salutation are most suitable for the next set of experiments.

• A heavier drone can be used in order to make the wind affect the drone less. If the drone is heavier, the wind will not push the drone away when it is trying to hover above a person. However, we do not know if an heavier drone will be available on the University. The persons in Delft did not answer the mails send to them and we think that Duarte does not possess an heavier drone. The option of hiring a drone will also be hard as most big drones need an licensed operator which makes doing our experiments very costly.
• An inside location can be used in order to counter the effect of the wind. However, the soccer pitch has an roof of 3 meters, which makes the personal space experiment impossible. For the experiment to be a success, we need at least 7 meters of height. This can be achieved in certain college rooms, however, we do not know if we can book a college room and if we use a college room, we cannot ask random people.
• If the first two solutions cannot be done, than we have to keep doing the experiment the same way as we did before despite the wind moving the drone to not preferred locations.

Battery Life

The battery of the AR Parrot has an estimated battery life of 12 minutes. In these 12 minutes, we can roughly do one experiment on one person. This makes doing the experiment really counterproductive. Therefore, we probably will need 4 to 5 batteries to be able to do a full experiment as charging a drone takes up to more than 3 hours. We have emailed Duarte, but he is on holyday at the moment and will help us when he is back at the start of this week. If Duarte has no more batteries available for us, we need to consider buying 4 more. This will cost about 100 euro as there will be the costs of an extra charger for the batteries. We have to see how Duarte will think about buying a few more batteries for us.

Meeting notes

Week 1

Presentation feedback:

• Sounds: Where does it come from (specific sound)
• Etiquetes of behaviour: how people should react (not yet established for drone ambulances)
• Catching a drone instead of landing it
• What is the need: What is the current availability of AED's
• When should the drone create noise (if any)
• What will we add to the existing product of TU Delft
• Where did TU Delft reasearch stop

Week 2

After the presentation, what is the definitive direction of our project?

Most studies about crowd movement focuss on an non-interruptive environment where fluid dynamics can be used in order to model the behaviour. We want to focuss more on the human aspects, which are unpridictable agents.

We make a map of available AEDs in Eindhoven and when they are still available for use to illustrate the problem. What is the survival chance?

• Experiment:
  • Rules and Regulation: (Nikolay & Patrick)
    • Privacy
    • Criminality
    • Safety (weather)
    • Liability (assuming it is autonomous
  • Experiment plan (Rense & Wessel
    • Code of Cunduct (of the tu/e)
    • Reasoning (+Hypothesys)
    • Experiment Setup

Update Wiki (finilaze problem statement etc.):

• Thom

Next meeting: 8-5, 11:15, MF15

Week 3

Meeting May 8th

The problem statement is vague and inaccurate:

• Provide a more concrete problem statement
• We described law, but it is not part of the problem statement (best to not include it at all, since it is not actually relevent to our project)
• Perhaps skip the ethical part
• Focuss more on landing as fast as possible In a human acceptable way
• How much 'fear' or 'panic' is acceptable in order increase the landing speed.

Experiment:

• Perhaps perform an experiment with a crowd
• Perhaps do the experiment in Delft?
• What if the drone arrives early?
• Prevent interference of bystanders

USE:

• Are there exceptions for ambulance/police drones currently?
  • Perhaps there are interesting rules for ambulance helicopters
• Are there exceptions for unmanned aerial vehicles?

Other:

• A map of AEDs is a good introduction to the problem statement, and what is the best strategical placement of the drones.
• Who currently pays for the AEDs?
• Perhaps recommend rules and regulations in our conclusion
• Rules and regulations should not be our main focuss in this project

---

Next meeting:

• Read the ambulance drone paper (on the drive) - All
• Rewrite problem statement
• Improve Objectives - Nikolay
• Further elaborate Users - Patrick
• Setup of the experiment - Wessel
• State of the art (paper) - Thom
• Look up robot experiment examples - Rense

Next meeting: 10-5, 10:00 in OGO2

Meeting May 10th

• State of the art of the drone (TU Delft paper) - Patrick
• Map (why do we need drones) - Thom
• Theory (How do EADs work, using the drone from start to end) - Nikolay
• Elaborate USE part - Rense
• Experiment (further elaborate the options) - Wessel

Week 4

Meeting may 15th

• Look at a previous group who did package delivery with a drone
• Perhaps incorporate approach velocity in the experiment
• Make sure we have a good end product in mind
  • Keep all tasks relevant to the end product
    • Take technical implementations from Delft for granted
• For the experiment setup, formulate how to process the data
• Formulate in general better questions regarding the project
  • Why are we doing this? Is it relevant? ... etc.
  • How are we going to achieve the goals
  • Split problems in smaller parts (Divide and conquer)
• For the drone, contact Duarte Antunes (D.Antunes@tue.nl)

Week 5

Meeting may 22nd

• Arrange more accu's to be able to perform the experiments
  • How much does an accu cost?
• Perhaps try with two persons
• How does the individual experiments scale to a larger crowd

Meeting may 24th

We performed preliminary experiments:

• Use more reliable control software (3rd party)
• Perhaps arrange an heavier drone, since the current one is easily influenced by wind.
• Perhaps find a better inside location
• Make sure there is enough open space to move about.
• Use third party software to extract flight data from the drone in order to get more accurate data.

Week 6

Experiment meetings: 31-5 (14:00, 17:00), 1-6 (12:00, 15:00), 2-6 (10:00)

Technical issues during experiments.

Week 7

Meeting June 7th

Personal space experiments done TODO:

Process measurements (Thom, Wessel)

• Insert all information
  • Male/female
  • 1st, 2nd, 3rd time
  • State of the participant (interested/drunk)
  • Discussion data and assumptions (application for any drone)

Guidelines for a landing drone (Patrick, Nikolay)

• Fastest way
• people's behaviour (set up a protocol)
• Sounds/sirens

State of the art (Rense)

• drone design
  • color, sound, speed, other specs
• Personal space with drones

Conclusion, Discussion

References

Code of conduct: https://www.drones.nl/wetgeving http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0019147/2015-11-07 https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/veiligheid/wat-te-doen-in-verkeer-bij-sirene-en-zwaailicht