Manish Kumar, PhD, professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati talks about how drones can advance healthcare.
Can you tell me what you and your colleagues are working on? You’re interested in robotics but not just any drone, a drone that maneuvers the way it does?
KUMAR: So, we are building over here what we call a telehealth drone. And this drone is going to provide health care at the comfort of people’s homes. So, what we are envisioning is a drone that goes out of its facilities, like a hospital, and goes to people’s homes. And not only travels outdoors, but it has ability to go inside people’s homes in order to establish the two-way audio-visual communication with the patient.
Why is that important that the drone just doesn’t go as far as the front door, that it actually has the ability not only to maneuver outside but inside?
KUMAR: So, you know, a lot of drones exist right now that have the ability to provide the medical supplies at people’s doorsteps, but that’s not what we are doing. We are building telehealth drone that will have the ability to go inside people’s homes so that it cannot only provide the medical supplies, but also establish the communication with the patient. We feel that is important because then the patients will have the supervision with which they can administer medicines or administer tests. Also, they can explain and do basic activities like taking their temperature, doing some minimal tests that can be done in the supervision of a doctor or nurse.
What population is this drone aiming to serve? What else are you able to fill in here for people that don’t have computers? What gaps are there in healthcare service that you see this filling?
KUMAR: So, we actually did a very in-depth survey of people we want to serve, and we found that there’s a group of people, particularly older people, who are not very comfortable with new technologies. And it is hard for them to get hold of, you know, a smartphone or smart device and update them. It is scheduling appointments through smart devices. We are going to take all that part away from the customers. This is all going to be done – it will be all – will be on the drone itself. Drone will carry a smart device that will be brought to a customer’s home and all the person needs to do is just come in front of that drone and talk to their doctors.
Talk to me a little bit about how far along this project you are. What can this drone do at this point? And how is this a little unique, again, engineering-wise from other drones?
KUMAR: So, most of the drones that are available in the market right now, they can deliver medical supplies at now, you know, people’s doorsteps, that means outdoors. So, all of these drones that are available in market, they can fly autonomously outdoors and drop the medical supplies at people’s doorsteps. Now, this drone can go inside people’s homes, and that’s very, very challenging from technology point of view because, once you go inside people’s homes, you lose connection with the GPS, and you do not know where the drone is. A drone does not know where it is, what is called a localization problem in robotics. And so we are trying to solve that problem. And in order to control the drone, in order to make it operate autonomously or semi-autonomously, even remotely controlled, you need to know where the drone is. And we are solving that problem using a variety of sensors that we are placing on the drone, and that is one of the primary challenges that we are solving. The second is that we want the drone, when it goes inside people’s homes, to be operated remotely by a human. And even the remote operation is very hard because of communication delay, of inability to see the entire environment. An operator cannot see the entire operating environment. So, what we are doing is we are providing semi-autonomous capabilities on the drone. What that means is that the drone will have the ability to sense its environment and find out obstacles, humans and other objects in the environment. And our computer software will make it impossible for the drone to collide with any of these objects. So, we are providing that kind of autonomous, intelligent capabilities in the drone. The drone will also be able to now find a location where it can land. We are also incorporating in drone an intelligent capability so that the drone can perform certain maneuvers if it loses contact, loses communication with the operator. And now, in that case, the drone will be able to find a proper location to land and it can do that in an autonomous fashion.
Will it be able to send off a signal so that you can find the drone, or a human being can find the drone then?
KUMAR: Right. So, the drone will, at every point of time, the operator would have a knowledge where the drone is. Only when it loses complete communication, that’s when the drone will autonomously not do anything else. It will try to land at a safe place, and it will wait for the further communication to be established before anything else can be done remotely on the drone.
How close are you to being able to have this rollout?
KUMAR: So, we already have as you’re saying, outdoor autonomous capability was already there, even in commercial drones. Right now, we have identified the set of sensors that would work best for indoor environment. And we have incorporated that localization capability. That is done. So, a drone can figure out its own location once it goes inside people’s homes. We also have performed in a software in the loop test to carry out remote operation of the drone.OK. So, you have already tested this on a small-scale indoors?
KUMAR: In the indoor, several of the capabilities had been tested. Its localization capabilities in the hardware has been tested. It’s able to fly. The remote capability, remote operation capability, now has been tested in the software, not in the hardware yet. Yes.
When we could see this, what would you say?
KUMAR: We are hoping that we will have a working prototype with all minimum capabilities needed by, in a year’s time frame from now.
In about a year?
KUMAR: In about a year from now.
Are there plans in place to test this in real-time yet and would that be in the Cincinnati area?
KUMAR: Yes. So, we already have a very good lab here at the University of Cincinnati. That’s where we do most of the flight tests. We also are collaborating with Maple Knoll Village. It’s a retirement community in Cincinnati area, where they will be providing us with an apartment where we can test this robot out with real people.
I guess bottom line, if there’s one thing you would want people to know about this project, what would that be? What would you want people to know?
KUMAR: We would like to let people know that this is an endeavor that of all of us researchers, the principal investigators of this project are very passionate about, and we have a truly multidisciplinary team, not only engineer but we have nursing, college of nursing involved, college of allied health and science involved in this project. And we just want to make health care more accessible to people.
Why are you passionate about it?
KUMAR: Because it’s a great application. We feel that this is going to improve people’s health, people’s life. It’s going to let older people stay at home for a longer time more independently. And of, you know, we are excited because it’s going to help humanity.
When we are in the other room watching the drone, can you just talk me through what I’ll be seeing, what you’ll be doing and testing, how that is similar to how this will, drone will operate?
KUMAR: Yes. I will be showing you the various sensors and the computer and other electronics available on the drone that helps us achieve the capabilities that I just described.
When you take it for a test flight in there, do you preprogram it or how does that work? Are you having it land on boxes or how do you program that?
KUMAR: So now, all the programming has been already done. Yes, it’s been preprogrammed. And now, its ability to gather and process sensor data, the program that does that, it’s already built on an onboard computer. So yes, it’s been preprogrammed to do that.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News.
END OF INTERVIEW
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