PFI-TT: Care Delivery Telehealth Drone

Award ID: 2234561

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project will be achieved by developing a drone-based healthcare delivery device that would help preserve the quality of life of older adults with chronic medical conditions and allow them to live in their homes while obtaining high quality healthcare. If successful, the care delivery telehealth drone is expected to: i) enable quick response to healthcare needs that need immediate attention; ii) enable delivery of improved and cost-effective quality at home, and iii) reduce loss of revenue by healthcare organizations by diminishing no-shows and cancellations of medical appointments. The proposed product is designed to address societal challenges such as shortage of quality healthcare providers, access to healthcare, and financial impact of institutionalized care of older adults. The proposed innovation is expected to help alleviate the socioeconomic disparities and provide general practitioners and specialists access to patients residing in rural, urban, and suburban areas irrespective of type of dwelling. The proposed project aims to develop, test, and demonstrate a viable drone prototype that can safely deliver healthcare to people at their place of residence and operate both in outdoor and indoor environment reliably. The goals of this proposed study are: i) developing the care delivery drone prototype with required software and hardware capabilities; ii) developing interfaces for users of the care delivery drone; and iii) testing and validating the prototype of the care delivery drone. The proposed work is intended to solve several technological barriers related to indoor navigation of drones, human-robot interaction, and telehealth systems. Developing software capabilities for teleoperation of drones, indoor localization, obstacle avoidance, and supervisory intelligent control for robustness against time delays and lost link are some of the research objectives of this project. Furthermore, the study will address issues at the interface of human-drone/human-telehealth system interaction to increase system efficiency. The results will help uncover the underlying principles of designing interfaces for teleoperation and user-drone interaction for telehealth and other civilian applications. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Mara E. Schindelholz