UAV Path Planning for the delivery of emergency medical supplies

The use of UAVs for the delivery of emergency medical equipment, such as Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs), has the potential to significantly improve response times in life-threatening situations. This time saving can be crucial for the patient’s life. However, the flight in urban areas presents a great challenge due to its complexity and regulatory limitations on the flight over densely populated areas. Therefore, in this work, a UAV route calculation algorithm that minimizes flight time taking into account these restrictions is proposed. Firstly, the horizontal flight profile is computed, generating trajectories avoiding densely populated areas. Then, considering the elevation of the terrain, the vertical profile as well as the aircraft performances are optimized using a direct Optimal Control method. A practical study case was developed to demonstrate the capabilities of the developed implementation.