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ABCD
ABCD
2021 / software / autonomy / uav

First-responder delivery drone

An aircraft delivering a small payload to a street address, autonomously, from any computer over a cellular link with video and telemetry, in 2021.

A street address is input using the Google maps interface, then the aircraft flies to it autonomously, delivering live video and telemetry back to the ground station.

the problem

We need autonomous drones which can deliver small payloads (like EpiPens) to street addresses for first responders, and we need them to be deployable from any computer while being monitored through live video and telemetry.

what I did

We built and tested 4 subystems: MAVLink telemetry including arm and disarm, address-to-coordinate resolution and autonomous navigation, a cellular link, and live video to the ground station.

what happened

A drone deployable to an address from any computer over a cellular link, with live video and telemetry, flown autonomously 4 times.

Networking Architecture

The aircraft is a Pixhawk and the ground station is a laptop, and they were never connected to the same network. The networking diagram below exists to get them to talk to each other. A Raspberry Pi rides on the airframe that runs MAVProxy, which takes MAVLink off the serial link to the Pixhawk and broadcasts it to a cellular connection. The Pi and the laptop both join a ZeroTier virtual network so each holds a fixed address regardless of their physical locations, which is what makes the ground station able to find an aircraft that is not on the same network. For live video, we struggled with carrier firewalling, so we used Dataplicity to tunnel the Pi's camera feed to the laptop using a TCP connection.

The networking diagram: ground station and laptop over a Wi-Fi connection to a Raspberry Pi running MAVProxy, which routes MAVLink to the flight controller, and a separate radio link to the transmitter.
Fig 1 Physical networking diagram.
The connectivity diagram: laptop and Raspberry Pi joined to one virtual private network over a cellular link, so both hold static addresses.
Fig 2 Virtual networking diagram to give static addresses to the laptop and Raspberry Pi.

More information

This slide deck contains extra information about the project, and was part of a presentation given to industry professionals.

Title slide: Drones As First Responders.Our Goals: learn industry-standard drone software, learn best practices for team software development, create a drone application for first responders. MAVLink, Slack and GitHub logos beneath.The aim, stated: a drone application that allows users to intuitively operate drones safely, over long distances, and without any bloated software downloads.Core Features: display essential telemetry with arm and disarm, AED and EpiPen delivery, a cellular connection, and live video for first responders to survey a situation.Software Architecture: MAVProxy on a Raspberry Pi carrying MAVLink to and from a Pixhawk, the Pixhawk driving the ESCs and reading GPS, a separate radio link to a handheld transmitter, and video reaching laptops and tablets through Dataplicity.The cellular path: a laptop running VNC, a ZeroTier network, a cell tower, a phone acting as a hotspot, and the Raspberry Pi on the aircraft.Display Essential Telemetry: MAVLink messaging, Python dictionaries, arm and disarm, beside a screenshot of the early telemetry window over footage of the aircraft.The ground station as the operator sees it, shown on a desktop monitor: the map with a dropped waypoint and live readouts on the left, the camera feed top right, and terminals over VNC below.AED and EpiPen delivery: Google Maps API, and MongoDB struck through in favour of a Flask server, beside a route on a map.The quadrotor standing in grass at a flying field, its GPS mast upright and payload slung underneath.
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