Drone Inspection System Based on the Electrochemical Impedance Detector by Dengue NS1 Biomarkers in Water Environments

Dengue viruses are currently one of the deadliest mosquito-borne infectious diseases; there is no effective treatment, and a vaccine for dengue fever is not yet available. Therefore, monitoring and preventing virus transmission is currently the most effective controlling method. This study focuses on environmental traces of dengue transmission, and a low-cost portable drone system for dengue virus inspection based on water sources is presented, which is equipped with a drone, a water collector, a microfluidic chip, and an electrochemical impedance converter using an Arduino development broad and an Analog Devices AD5934 chip. Water samples are carried back by a drone with a water collector, which can be measured and analyzed outdoors, that is not required to be brought back to the laboratory. The concentration of 10- and 20-μg/cc dengue nonstructural protein 1 can be identified by impedance magnitude in the microfluidic chip using the bead-based biomarker technology. The presented novel device using a drone-based collector with a low-cost electrochemical impedance sensor may have great potential for the creation of dengue maps, becoming a valuable technique that is beneficial to trace dengue transmission. In the future, it may quickly identify differences in impedance spectroscopy between numerous viruses for environmental investigation.