Design and Implementation of an Ambulance Drone Prototype for Emergency Medical Deliveries

Abstract

The world was stunned and shocked at the beginning of the novel coronavirus (Covid 19) pandemic by the lack of medical equipment and failure of hospital deliveries in many areas. The idea of this project was thus to design and implement an automated, unmanned medical ambulance drone that would be quick to implement, assemble, and manage at a low cost to support effective medical logistics services by transporting vaccines, blood, food, and emergency medicines both to doctors and workers in need of such items in health institutions, and to patients otherwise isolated in their homes. The resulting prototype ambulance drone can be used to perform repetitive tasks at reasonable cost and quality and can reach critical cases quickly. The electrical and electronic circuit diagrams of the implemented drone were designed and implemented using Fritzing software and C++. The outdoor signal range of the drone control is up to 1,000 m, with around half that distance indoors. A gyroscope is installed on the transmitter board, which, in the absence of new orders from the Arduino Nano, stabilises the plane in the air in a state of horizontal equilibrium. The software used then activates the flight controller code, setting up a small serial input processor for incoming data using a timer. To ensure the safety of the drone, a return key is activated, and the implemented quadcopter can then hover in the air with the help of a Global Positioning System (GPS), and the YMCA 32 flight controller that essentially stores the required GPS location in LAT coordinates and LON variables, ensuring that the quadcopter will hover over the correct coordinates. To achieve the urgent transportation of emergency medicines and corona vaccines, the drone was equipped with a small portable cooler (refrigerator). Where there is a need to operate the aircraft for longer distances, the drone’s batteries can be recharged during flight by means of small, flexible polycrystalline solar panels. The drone was also equipped with further insulation in order to increase the efficacy of the cooling box, while the opening of the cooling box gate is controlled using a small robot.