Covid 19: KY EPSCOR: FY21: NASA Space Grant Project: Autonomous Multi-UAV System for COVID-19 Body Temperature Monitoring of Crowds - Match for 3200003095

Autonomous Multi-UAV System for COVID-19 Body Temperature Monitoring of Crowds Abstract: The goal of this research is to develop and implement an autonomous system consisting of multiple unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) to monitor body temperature of a crowd under different operation scenarios. It is now known that many COVID-19 cases come with an abnormal body temperature, which is one of the key featured symptoms. As the nation is currently drafting plans for reopening the economy, massive body temperature monitoring systems needed to be implemented. Current remote body temperature monitoring techniques suffer from several drawbacks including inaccurate measurements, potential of testers being exposed to COVID-19 patients, and extensive reliance on human operators. We aim to develop an autonomous multi-UAV system which will monitor people’s body temperature from a close distance in front of each person. This 1-year project aims to propose high-level architectures and algorithms for a cooperative UAV team to monitor the body temperature of a crowd, which will significantly improve the UAV operation performance compared to existing works. We also propose to perform indoor flight testings using existing facilities to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed system.