Servo - December 2016

62 SERVO 12.2016

doctor’s office, a block from the fire department, and two blocks from our home. AEDs had not been invented yet. It would have been wonderful had an Ambulance Drone AED been available nearby for use by a professional. As a kid who loved to build robots, I had never dreamed of a flying robot to save people.

The American Heart and Stroke Association has these facts stated on their site that stress the importance of close proximity to an AED. “Each year in the US, there are approximately 359,400 assessed Emergency Medical Services (EMS) cardiac arrests outside of a hospital setting and on average, less than 10% of victims survive. Cardiac arrest affects people of all ages, but occurs more commonly in adults with prior heart disease. It will only become more common as Americans age.

In fact, early defibrillation along with CPR is the only way to restore the victim’s heart rhythm to normal in a lot of cases of cardiac arrest. For every minute that passes without CPR and defibrillation, however, the chances of survival decrease by 7–10%.”

Drones will Soon Deliver Packages

Aerial drone package and fast food delivery has been a main topic of robotics news for a while now. Domino’s Pizza has tested aerial drone and wheeled mobile drone robot delivery of their products as

Figures 5-7 indicate. The octo-copter drone in Figure 5 looks to be the wave of the future in the United Kingdom, as is the DomiNoDriver scooter in Figure 6. Domino’s in Australia has tried out the mobile ground vehicle shown in Figure 7, which is a bit more practical in my opinion. I’ve always loved new concepts that make use of robotics, but just like a lot of other folks I’m concerned about drones either smashing a pizza when it’s dropped off at a customer’s home or the pizzas being cold because it took too long for the drone to reach the customer.

According to a recent YouGov poll, only 37 percent of Americans believe pizza delivery drones would drop off their order undamaged. Only a third of those surveyed trust that a drone-delivered pizza would arrive at the right temperature. I’ve wondered exactly how an aerial drone would remove a hot pizza from an expensive insulated carrier box without something going wrong.

Two-thirds of those polled said they’d prefer a human delivery person to a delivery drone. However, in the 18-34 age bracket, this group trusted robot delivery of a pizza more than the rest of those surveyed.

CyPhy Works Teams Up with UPS

A recent drone delivery test was performed this past September in Massachusetts by the delivery giant, UPS with the drone shown in Figure 8 that it purchased from Helen Greiner’s CyPhy Works. It turned out to be an eight minute life-saving event. The 42 inch/10 pound drone delivered an asthma inhaler to a child at a YMCA camp on Children’s Island off the coast of Beverly, MA three miles away.

“Delivery drones have taken another step in proving they can safely deliver urgent medicine to hard-to-reach locations,” wrote Steve Crowe on Robotics Trends website. The island is only accessible by boat, and then only for a walk-on passenger (not cars). The drone took about eight minutes, flying at about 22 MPH to reach the camp versus the normal 30 minute boat ride.

Remote locations such as this have long been critical concerns for medical and emergency situations on inaccessible islands. I know this first hand, having lived on Orcas Island off the coast of Washington for a number of years. Neither Orcas Island or any of the four main islands and many