At 75 mph to the Emergency
The Defibrillator Arrives by Drone
Students from the Horyzn initiative at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a drone that can transport a defibrillator and drop it at the scene of an emergency. The vertical take-off and landing electric aircraft (eVTOL) is significantly faster than rescue teams.
Especially in rural areas, the journey time for the emergency services can be very long. However, every minute counts in the event of a cardiac arrest. With the help of the drone, which reaches a maximum speed of 120 km/h, a defibrillator can be deployed to the scene of an emergency within a few minutes. This can be operated by anyone on site, even without specialist medical knowledge, as modern devices provide spoken step-by-step instructions after being switched on.
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In Germany, 115,000 patients suffer a sudden cardiac arrest every year - and only 11 per cent survive. When an emergency occurs, every second counts. Whether the patient survives depends directly on the response time of the emergency services and the application of defibrillation. On average, this takes around 9 minutes. By reducing the time to 4 minutes, the survival rate can be tripled. |
Development in the Cloud
The drone is developed, designed, tested and continuously optimised on Dassault Systèmes' 3DExperience platform. The French company sponsors access to the student initiative, which was founded in 2019, and initially supported it with experts during implementation.
By using the cloud-based platform, the Horyzn team was able to break down internal data silos so that everyone involved in the project was always working on the latest design versions and no data was lost. As all development steps are managed in the same software environment, the team was able to simplify internal communication and reduce development and design times.
The Ideal Drone Fuselage via Modsim
During development, Horyzn relies on an integrated modelling and simulation approach (Modsim), in which simulation accompanies the entire development process from start to finish. For example, when designing the fuselage, the effects of different weights could already be simulated during the idea phase, allowing the optimum type of load application to be determined. Not having to build prototypes saved time and money.
Following the successful realisation, Horyzn is now working on the further development of the concept and is planning to collaborate with rescue services to test the use of such technology. Application scenarios such as the emergency delivery of EpiPen or the dispensing of emergency medication are conceivable. The student initiative is also working closely with aviation companies to further advance the drone industry. (uh)
