Military UAVs Adapted for Humanitarian Missions

Posted 5 Sep 2008 at 18:32 UTC by steve

Most of the stories we hear about military robots involve killing people, destroying things, or helping the military do those sorts of things. It's nice to hear about some military robots helping people for change. The National Health Laboratory Service in South Africa is adapting military unmanned flying vehicles (UAVs) and micro air vehicles (MAVs) to act as robot medical couriers. The flying robots help the agency transport medical samples from more than 5,000 clinics. Quick sample delivery speeds diagnosis of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS patients, helping to limit the impact of epidemics and speed medical treatment of patients. In some cases sterile specimen containers are delivered by autonomous landings at the testing facility. In other cases, the UAV precision drops the specimen containers at predefined waypoints. To further speed diagnosis, the results are dispatched via SMS back to the originating clinic. Story via the DIY Drones blog.