How Countries Make Use of The Virus-Fighting Drones?
Remember how we all used to play with the remote-controlled airplane in our childhood? Little did we know back then, something like a toy would be playing such a crucial role in fighting a pandemic! Not that the little kids did know about the pandemic, but it possibly could have never crossed their minds how something like a toy could have such a great impact in a situation like this. This article focuses on enhancing people’s knowledge about the virus-fighting and pandemic drones.
Now, what exactly is a drone? Where do we use it and why do we use it? Let us have a look.
A drone is an “unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)”- simply put ,an aircraft without a human pilot onboard. They have a myriad of applications and uses in the modern world including military, commercial, agricultural, healthcare, scientific, recreational, product delivery, policing and surveillance, aerial photography, infrastructure inspections, and drone racing. Due to such a wide range of applications, we use drones more frequently these days.
Next, coming to the most important part. How are these drones fighting the current pandemic or helping us win the battle against the corona virus?
World Economic Forum:
The World Economic Forum is partnering with governments and companies to set up rules and regulations that allow drones to be manufactured and used in various ways to help society and the economy. The Forum has created a COVID Action Platform with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Around the globe, many countries are using drones for various purposes including-ensuring lock down, disinfecting areas, delivering supplies, broadcasting, temperature detection and many more. Let us dive deeper into this and take a peek into some of the countries using drone technology.
China
China’s use of drone technology is very interesting. Drones are used to check people’s temperature to determine if they have a fever and to monitor hospitals and clinics to ensure compliance with protocols.
A drone loaded with medical testing supplies took off from the People’s Hospital of Xinchang County, Zhejiang Province and flew to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention located 3 km away. This can significantly lessen unnecessary human contact, reduce the delivery time and also speed feedback for crucial tests required by patients and medical staff. Consumer delivery was challenging in parts of China like Anxin’s series of semi-isolated islands until drone delivery came into action. With support from the local government, e-commerce company JD deployed its drone team and quickly conducted ground surveys, designed flight corridors, requested airspace access permission and conducted final flight tests replacing hours-long drives with a 2 km flight that could be completed in just 10 minutes.
Watch this YouTube video for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/kwF8FgM4Cw8
India
Drones in India are remarkably aiding the fight against COVID-19 in the country. Where have drones been used in India?
In Maharashtra, the Government is using drones for crowd-controlling and monitoring the movement on streets and if a congregation of people is witnessed in any area, police teams are sent to take action. The pilots fly drones for a couple of hours a day within an area of about 500 m, looking for signs of people gathering. This footage is then uploaded on a dashboard with the time and location, which the Mumbai Police access from their control room and send out teams to eliminate the crowds accordingly. There are also two on-ground teams equipped with surveillance drones and speaker-enabled drones. Drones sent out to areas that are hard to access like Dharavi and other slums also assist the police.
The police in Jammu and Kashmir are using drones to monitor Srinagar and other parts of the valley along with creating awareness in response to the pandemic and checking for any violations of the laws imposed in the region.
The Kerala State Police launched the “Project Eagle Eye” and has deployed 350 drones for surveillance in the state to monitor the streets for those who are violating the lockdown.
“Drones have the capacity to carry up to 10 litres of disinfectant, cover a distance of around 20 km and spray 200 litres of it a day,” Prem Kumar Vislawath, Founder of Marut Drones says. The team at Marut has successfully disinfected a stretch of 1,900 km across eight districts of Telangana. Drones are being implemented with surveillance cameras, thermal imaging payloads and sky speakers to keep the public informed.
Drones in Delhi are used to enforce social distancing on the roads including in Asia’s largest fruit and vegetable wholesale market ,Azadpur Mandi, where disinfectants are being sprayed and has been adopted by the police as an extension to their forces to keep watch on places like grocery shops, banks and religious places.
“We have deployed drones with thermal sensors to detect movement in the forest,” says Deep Kanakia, Director of Operations at DFI. “Without any human interference to deal with, poachers may think it’s a good time for their business. This benefits the Karnataka Police Department in keeping a tab on poaching activities in the forests of Bangalore showing the importance of saving wildlife during this crisis.”
The “Drone Man of India”
Milind Raj, a tech-genius in India has developed an ‘anti-corona drone’ prototype, also known as the ‘sanitizer drone’ which has the capabilities of carrying out a comprehensive sanitization process and is equipped with a good lifting capacity.
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati
IIT Guwahati has taken the lead in the development of various drones to battle the fight against COVID-19. According to the Director, T.G. Sitharam, they have developed drones for disinfection and drones equipped with infra-red cameras for thermal screening and identification of suspected cases along with loudspeakers to give proper instructions in certain areas.
Indian Army
Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME) has developed a range of products to aid India’s battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. One such product is the quadcopters (drones with four rotors) equipped with disinfectant sprays that can sanitize larger areas exposed to contamination in a short time. It can carry 5 litres of disinfectant at one time and with a spray height of 10 metres, it can cover an area the size of a football field in about five minutes.
European Countries
Manna Aero, a drone company abandoned its fast-food delivery tests and has partnered with Ireland’s health authority to deliver prescriptions, medicines and other essential supplies to vulnerable people in the small rural town of Moneygall instead. The mobile command centre for the drones is based at Barack Obama Plaza. The drones are not beautiful or fast but incredibly safe, are built about 10 miles north of Cardiff, can fly in moderate gales, have redundant batteries and flight computers, and a parachute for gentle descents if by any chance a failure happens. Even though the drones are fully autonomous, a pilot is present at all times to inspect and watch it.
The city of Cannes on the French Riviera is using drones to disinfect its streets. Spanish police have also been utilizing drones to reprimand people who do not follow the social distancing and quarantine rules. Likewise, the Lithuanian capital Vilnius has been issuing messages to older citizens, informing them that they should stay home with flyers delivered by drone. The Municipality of Burgas announced that it will be measuring the temperature of its citizens with a thermometric camera placed on a drone in the city areas with predominant Roma population, where people live in cramped surroundings where sanitary conditions are poor.
The UK Space Agency is also looking at the plausibility of creating air corridors between different locations to help in this current crisis.
African Countries
Ghana is using drones as a unique approach in decreasing the amount of time it takes to get COVID-19 test samples from remote rural areas to medical labs.
The Ministry of Health expanded its partnership with Zipline, an American company that uses automated drones to deliver medical supplies. On April 17 2020, on Zipline’s first flight, 51 samples packed in special red boxes using guidelines issued by the World Health Organization, placed inside the belly of the drone later put on a launcher were flown from the Omenako drone distribution centre to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in Accra.
After reaching the testing facility, the drone opens up its belly and drops the box of samples using a parachute to ease the landing, later taken inside by a health worker after disinfecting it. Morocco has also rapidly increased its fleet of drones as it battles COVID-19, using them for aerial surveillance, public service announcements and sanitization in Africa.
Mideast and Gulf countries:
Israel Police said that teams in the northern coastal city of Nahariya were using drones to patrol the beachfront area and enforce movement restrictions. Jordan also joined a host of Middle East countries using drone technology to enforce curfews, deliver public health announcements and even monitor people’s temperatures. Kuwait sent drones to the skies in mid-March to broadcast messages in multiple languages urging people to maintain the rules of social distancing. Like Dubai Police, drones with a loudspeaker were used by the police in the emirate of Sharjah to order people to stay home.
In Saudi Arabia, municipal authorities have utilized drones to measure the body temperature of shoppers in Buraidah. Authorities in Oman have used the aircraft to diminish gatherings in public places in the capital Muscat. Qatar also announced that it was carrying out a drone-based “awareness drive”.
Kazakhstan
KazUAV, Kazakhstan’s leading drone service provider and a member of Japan-based Terra Drone Corporation, has been helping the Nur-Sultan Police Department to patrol the borders of the locked-down capital city with drones, ensuring ‘contactless’ surveillance and fast-paced operations. The KazUAV team broadcast all captured data, as well as the exact coordinates of objects of interest, directly to the operational headquarters command centre using drone-mounted cameras with both visible and infrared sensors.
Watch the YouTube video for reference:
USA
Battle Creek police have three drones for 90 days from DJI Enterprise as part of the company’s COVID-19 US Disaster Relief Program. Out of three, only two will be returned and one will be donated to the police. The drones are equipped with cameras, lights and loudspeakers and can be used to survey public spaces, spot hazardous activities and broadcast information. Departments in Florida are using drones to fly over long stretches of beach to monitor gatherings and provide messages about social distancing.
Adam Lisberg, corporate communication director for North America, said drones were sent to 43 agencies in the U.S. including Battle Creek Police, the Kent County Sheriff Department and the Bloomfield Township Fire Department in Michigan. The program was designed for agencies with an existing certified program so the equipment can be used quickly without training and certifying new pilots.
Draganfly
Draganfly, an award-winning, unmanned vehicle sector, announced the first-ever series of U.S. ‘pandemic drone’ test flights in Westport, Connecticut to identify social distancing and detect symptoms presented by the virus. This new pandemic drone technology is being tested by the Westport Police Department as a new “Flatten the Curve Pilot Program” and is made possible by the collaboration and integration of technologies developed by Draganfly, Vital Intelligence Inc., and the University of South Australia. Draganfly‘s pandemic drone software uses biometric readings in its analysis process and the software is used to understand patterns within a population to allow users to react quickly to ongoing events or new potential health threats. Its deep learning algorithms can quickly detect symptoms such as sneezing and coughing, high blood pressure and rapid heartbeats to make a diagnosis of disease. The pandemic drone will be having a specialized sensor and computer vision systems that can display fever/temperature, heart and respiratory rates. Westport intends to use drone technology to help protect potential at-risk groups, such as seniors and other areas where there is a crowd.
Watch this YouTube video for reference:
Conclusion
Thus, Virus-Fighting Drones can do many wonderful things. Some of the advantages associated with it are:
- One of the most significant advantages of using drones is the ability to act without risking human lives.
- The drones offer the possibility of covering as much as ground as possible in a short time.
- UAVs with thermal cameras can be used for temperature control enabling us to measure the body temperature of those affected and keep track of the sick.
- Spraying roads and streets with disinfectants are made easier.
- Sending medical supplies to patients, hospitals, and areas of difficult access has become easier with the use of drones.
- With drones, officials can more efficiently scan an area and broadcast a message to ensure social distancing.
These are just a few initiatives taken by some countries to utilize drone technology.
Countries who haven’t yet adopted drone technology must know how beneficial it is and also start using it. Drones can be used to bridge key healthcare gaps and is a potential game-changer if it is used without causing any sort of privacy and security issues or other potential dangers. We need the world to fight together in this pandemic and win the battle against COVID-19 making use of the technology available during this time. Let us hope for better innovations and developments to be created soon in order to win this war.
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