A proposed UAV for indoor patient care

Technol Health Care. 2015 Sep 10. doi: 10.3233/THC1046. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Indoor flight, obstacle avoidance and client-server communication of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) raises several unique research challenges. This paper examines current methods and associated technologies adapted within the literature toward autonomous UAV flight, for consideration in a proposed system for indoor healthcare administration with a quadcopter. We introduce Healthbuddy, a unique research initiative towards overcoming challenges associated with indoor navigation, collision detection and avoidance, stability, wireless drone-server communications and automated decision support for patient care in a GPS-denied environment. To address the identified research deficits, a drone-based solution is presented. The solution is preliminary as we develop and refine the suggested algorithms and hardware system to achieve the research objectives.

Keywords: Medical decision support; autonomous flight; collision detection; drone; healthcare; indoor flight; obstacle avoidance; unmanned aerial vehicle.