Enhancing Medical Support on the Battlefield

Soaring to New Heights with Intel RealSense

Blood loss through hemorrhage is the leading cause of battlefield deaths, and 80 percent of these deaths occur within the first hour after injury. AeroMed Lab is extending this critical “golden hour” with an autonomous, drone-based delivery system that offers new hope to people who have been injured in combat. Each drone carries life-saving blood, maintained in optimal conditions during transport.
“While our mission is primarily focused on whole blood delivery, the drones can carry anything from bandages and medicine to food and spare parts,” explains Stephanie Lenow, CEO at AeroMed Lab. “Our mission is to save lives on the battlefield by ensuring that essential medical supplies reach wounded soldiers quickly.”

Extending the Golden Hour with Precision Kinetic Delivery

AeroMed’s drones are designed to drop packages on designated targets without the need to hover or land. Visual data from Intel RealSense powers advanced algorithms for obstacle avoidance, precision delivery, and route optimization.
“Our primary product is our AI software,” says Cody Hatfield, Founder and Lead AI Scientist at AeroMed lab. “We are developing AI algorithms that can autonomously navigate a drone across long distances at very low altitudes of two to eight meters.”
Thanks to these AI algorithms, the drones can drop packages on designated targets or even throw them over walls, into trenches, or through open windows. This allows soldiers to stay in secure locations, minimizing their exposure to potential threats. Commercial and civilian drone-delivery platforms are not designed to operate in contested environments or deal with the hazards of combat zones, such as GPS jamming.
Kinetic delivery refers to the dynamic nature of these missions, which require computer vision technology to coordinate the drops and estimate optimal trajectories. Intel RealSense Depth Camera D455 gathers data from two embedded depth-sensing cameras to carry out each mission.

Selecting Intel RealSense Depth Camera D455

Hatfield is responsible for the development of AeroMed’s AI software. He also takes the lead on strategic technology decisions. He selected Intel RealSense due to its advanced capabilities for object detection, collision avoidance, distance estimation, and scanning. He appreciates that Intel RealSense has a large developer community and a mature software development kit (SDK). These software assets enabled his team to quickly set up the camera and integrate it with an NVIDIA Jetson computing board.
“Intel RealSense allows for fast prototyping and development,” Hatfield says. “It also gives us a robust community to lean on for support while we push the cutting edge of 3D scanning technology.”
The Intel RealSense SDK contains many software wrappers, which will be critical as AeroMed adds or changes languages in the future. “Our engineering team found Intel RealSense to be quicker, easier, lighter, and cheaper than Lidar,” Hatfield notes. “It only took two days and $500 to get it up and running. Using Lidar or a bespoke development kit would have taken several weeks and far more money.”