Development of Drone Cargo Bay with Real-Time Temperature Control

Abstract

In order to deliver medical products (medicines, vaccines, blood packs, etc.) in time for needed areas, a method of transporting goods using drones is being studied. However, temperature-sensitive medical products may decay due to outside temperature changes. The time required to transport over the distance may vary a lot as well. As a result, the likelihood of the goods deteriorating is very high. There is a need for a study on cargo bay to prevent this and to protect the medical goods. In this paper, in order to protect the temperature sensitive medical goods, the inside cargo bay is equipped with the cooling fan device and the electric heating elements. These elements can be monitored and controlled according to the user’s discretion. By using the web server built inside the cloud server, the temperature can be controlled in real-time from anywhere without the limitation of distance. We built the proposed device, and installed it on the drone cargo bay. The test results show that the cargo bay can be temperature-controlled, and the setting can be maintained over a great distance. The user can watch the temperature variations during the transport and ascertain the goodness of the medical supply with the data. It is expected that such development can greatly enhance the utility of the drone operations, especially for the medical supply transport applications.