Autonomous Drone Delivery of Medical Supplies to Care Homes for Covid-19 Rapid Response

新冠肺炎疫情给社会各界带来严重冲击。紧急服务机构、政府和执法机构在应对Covid-19以及采取严格措施减少病毒传播方面不堪重负。医疗保健部门面临着巨大的压力，医生和护士不得不两班倒，以挽救受影响公民的生命。“无人生命”（UML）计划通过部署自动向养老院运送医疗用品来协助政府和整个医疗保健部门。牛津郡议会作为联合调查员。我们将共同合作开展工业研究，部署自主无人机，将医疗用品（包括急用药品和一些轻型个人防护装备）从药房安全及时地运送到疗养院，为抗击Covid-19的患者提供服务。预计这将大大降低疗养院的感染风险，疗养院是受COVID-19大流行影响最严重的部门之一。目前，COVID-19医疗用品由专门的快递服务提供。这种手工运送医疗用品的过程缓慢且效率低下，导致周转时间过长，在收集药品时可能会污染快递员和患者，而且由于城市地区的需求很大，农村地区的业务覆盖范围不足。所有这些加起来，这种操作的成本可能相当高，导致那些财政资源有限的人更难以获得。通过部署自主无人机交付，我们确保医疗用品的快速周转时间，减少快递员的污染，以更低的成本增加供应品的数量，从而挽救更多的生命。这项研究将提供一种可扩展的商业模式，以扩大服务范围（多次投递、多家药店、向医院和家庭提供服务），并弥合知识和技能差距，利用无人机运送正在牛津大学试验的COVID-19疫苗。UML的自治即服务（autonomous -as-a- service）软件平台已经被Verizon、瑞士邮政等主要企业客户以及维也纳市等政府部门部署，用于从室内物流到自主搜索和救援的各种用例。

Covid-19 has severely impacted all walks of human life. Emergency services, governments and law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed in tackling Covid-19 as well as implementing strict measures to reduce the spread of the virus. The healthcare sector has come under immense pressure to save the lives of affected citizens with doctors and nurses having to work double-shifts. Unmanned Life (UML) proposes to assist governments and the healthcare sector as a whole by deploying Autonomous Delivery of Medical Supplies to Care Homes. With Oxfordshire County Council as co-investigator. Together, we will collaborate to conduct industrial research on deploying autonomous UAVs that deliver medical supplies (including acute medicine and some lightweight PPE) from pharmacies, securely and timely to care homes for patients fighting Covid-19\. This is expected to significantly decrease the risk of infection at care homes, which is one of the most impacted sectors from the COVID-19 pandemic.Currently, COVID-19 medical supplies are delivered by dedicated courier services. This process of delivering medical supplies manually is slow and inefficient resulting in the lengthy turnaround time, potential contamination of couriers and patients when collecting the medication as well as lack of operational coverage for rural areas due to a high demand within urban areas. Adding all up, the cost of such operation can be quite high resulting in more limited accessibility for those ones with limited financial resources. By deploying autonomous drone delivery, we ensure a quick turnaround time for medical supplies, reduce the contamination of couriers, increase the number of supplies delivered at a lower cost and thus save more lives. The research will provide a scalable business model to increase the scope of the service (multiple drop-offs, multiple pharmacies, services to hospitals and homes) and bridge the knowledge and skills gap to use drones for delivery of COVID-19 vaccine being trialled at Oxford. UML's Autonomy-as-a-Service software platform has already been deployed by major enterprise customers like Verizon, Swiss Post etc. as well as governments like the City of Vienna for use cases ranging from indoor logistics to autonomous search and rescue.