Low-cost and Efficient Quadrotor for Medicine Delivery and IoT based Air Quality Monitoring

Abstract

The emerging field of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has witnessed a surge in research and development efforts in the recent years. Among UAVs, quadrotors have been used extensively for several applications such as precision agriculture, drone light shows, surveillance, mapping, medicine delivery, and air quality monitoring. This paper presents a multifunctional quadrotor platform designed to address the growing demand for versatile and efficient Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This setup can be beneficial in building a multi-functional drones that are low-cost while maintaining their efficiency. Equipped with advanced features such as a LiDAR sensor for obstacle avoidance within a 2m proximity and an IoT-enabled air quality monitoring on Thing Speak with 6s refresh rate, the quadrotor offers enhanced safety, real-time data collection, and adaptability to various applications. The quadrotor hardware uses a PixHawk 2.4.8 flight controller with local monitoring of the flight data done using Mission Planner. The proposed quadrotor hardware has been used for two applications: i) Medicine Delivery and ii) IoT based Air Quality Monitoring. The same quadrotor has been used for both applications. A comparison with the prior work mentioned in the literature has been done for both the applications. The following parameters have been considered for the comparison: i) maximum flight time, ii) application area iii) weight, iv) type of drone, v) number of drones used and vi) battery used. The quadrotor's adaptation as a multifunctional drone makes it a promising tool for various and varied industries instead of the existing concept of a single drone for a single application.