Servo - December 2016

to cut down street traffic congestion, create efficient delivery of an order, and cut down on exhaust emissions.

“We see a huge potential for robotic delivery systems in the future, and by combining our vans and the robots, we call it the mothership concept,” says Volker Mornhinweg, Head of Mercedes-Benz Vans. The small robotic vehicles can carry up to 40 pounds and complete deliveries within a three mile radius. They move at pedestrian speeds and can maneuver around obstacles and people.

Navigation is via GPS and multiple cameras are used to map the vehicle’s intended path. The packages are securely locked within the cargo bay and can only be opened by the intended recipient.

Starship Technologies has also partnered with Switzerland’s postal service, Swiss Post to test the delivery robots in three locations across the country including the capital, Bern. They want to see how effective the robots can be at carrying goods over the last mile of the delivery route.

Combining Truck Delivery Drones

After studying Amazon and Starship’s plans of increasing drone range with the use of vans or buses and the CyPhy Works experiment, I think it makes a lot of sense to use the same technology with AED drone shipments. Of course, on-time delivery of standard packages and pizzas is important, but not nearly as critical as sending a life-saving AED to a remote location. As I’ve stated before, today’s drones have a critical endurance limitation due to battery capacity. If you increase the battery’s capacity, the weight is increased and the carrying capacity of the drone is reduced proportionally. So, absolutely, one of the answers to this dilemma is to shorten the drone’s travel distance by having another vehicle carry the drone to a point as close to the final destination as possible.

Let’s suppose that the 911 emergency network has matured to the point that many local police and government vehicles have an ambulance drone in the trunk. The drone is safely tucked in a plastic case with a cable running from the car’s 12 volt system to a charger built into the case to keep the drone’s and AED’s batteries fully charged. All of the local system’s and fire department vehicles are continually tracked via GPS and locations are updated on an area map in a central computer.

When an emergency call comes into 911 or the app’s control center, the central computer decides which vehicle is closest to the site of the emergency and informs an operator to call the vehicle’s driver. The driver then stops at a clear location, removes the drone from the enclosure, and allows it to take off and go to the site of the emergency — whether that be an inaccessible area or just a rural or urban home or work site.

I am envisioning a larger drone that might carry a small oxygen bottle or a chemical oxygen generator and mask in addition to the AED, as well as a few wound care supplies such as bandages, splints, and topical antiseptics (maybe even an EpiPen as seen in Figure 11; an epinephrine injection device is typically carried by those who have severe allergies for life-critical allergic reactions).

Is this just a dream of the future or could it be implemented with today’s technology? It is possible, and one of you could be the force behind the implementation process.

A Useful Assistant for Humans

Notice that I used the word useful in the title above. As I have mentioned many times over the years, well-meaning designers have tried to develop a robotic caregiver that would be the all-in-one device to care for seniors and hospitalized persons. When benevolent thoughts of developing a caregiver robot arise, people first think of help for disabled or hospitalized people and not for seniors living on their own.

However, when a prospective designer begins to analyze the needs that all disabled persons may require, they quickly realize that no single design can meet the unique needs of all disabled persons. On the other hand, a quick analysis will show that most seniors have all their functional physical capabilities, it’s just that these functions do not work as well as they once did. This very large group of people needs physical assistance in daily living.

With the best intentions in mind, the best robot product results so far have been a passive robot that can perform two-way communications with a doctor or other persons, and deliver needed food, and medical supplies and/or medicine. The RP-Vita telepresence robot from iRobot and In Touch Health shown in Figure 12 is a great example of a robot that has proven its usefulness as a nurse or doctor’s assistant in hospital environments.