DCA project meets the Consortium

On 15/05/2024, representatives from IPN and LOAD participated in a plenary meeting of the umbrella project Imagine-B5G to present the status of the Drone Care Angel (DCA) project. During the meeting, they highlighted the progress made in leveraging advanced 5G features to enable real-time health monitoring using drones. The presentation emphasized the successful design and implementation of a functional architecture for the DCA application, utilizing a cloud-native approach and incorporating key 5G infrastructure aspects (network slicing, deployment of artefact at the Edge).

The Drone Care Angel (DCA) project focuses on the support of an innovative service, centered on real-time health monitoring of individuals while they are on the move, leveraging beyond 5G features. This innovative service will enable subscribed users to be health-monitored via a 5G-connected drone responsible for collecting video data and aggregating other IoT data (e.g. health sensor data from available smartband). The main technical objectives for the proposal include: (1) exploring advanced 5G networking features (particularly Network Slicing, MEC) for a UAV-supported health service; (2) validating the ability of a 5G-enabled UAV to collect a significant volume of data and its usefulness (i.e., in terms of QoE) for consumption by a remotely located health agent; (3) assessing the potential of available APIs for allowing the straightforward deployment of the DCA service, and analyzing its limitations over standardized alternatives such as SEAL (Rel. 17); and (4) promoting the use of AR and AI-based IR to enhance awareness of the user’s health status during the medical appraisal through the use of advanced 5G features (i.e., eMBB, low latency, deployment of AR artefact at the Edge, reliability).

In the context of the Imagine-B5G umbrella, DCA accomplished the following:

• Design and implementation of a functional architecture for our application considering relevant aspects of the 5G infrastructure, such as the deployment of DCA’s software components using a cloud-native approach;

• Develop and fine-tune Image Recognition algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence for injury and body parts detection;
• Develop and partially test an Augmented Reality module for DCA’s system;
• Customize two drones to the eHealth use-case embrace with fulfil support of 5G and its features (i.e., slicing);

• Collect some KPIs from the 5G infrastructure related to throughput (i.e., bitrate, package loss, jitter);
• Onboard some DCA’s artifacts at the Edge of the IT-AV infrastructure for improved service latency, following a cloud-native approach taking advantage of the APIs provided by the patron (i.e., OSM and OpenSlice).

In the near future, we envision the following roadmap:

• Instantiate the top tier slice (25 Mbps – 4K Video);
• Experiments focus on slices switching (base to top tier and vice versa);
• Adapt, customise, and deploy the rest of the modules at the Edge of the IT-AV infrastructure;
• Run the DCA pilot in the IT-AV facility.