BioSense Project

Overview

In the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) era, the core business operation is digital data acquisition and demands of innovation at speed.  The Biosense system is designed to acquire data for farmers, land and business owners, security, military, and government. 

Basically, there are three major participants in this environment.

•  Farmers and Graziers  
•  Land and Natural Resource Management Organizations 
• Security and Military 

These participants form an ecosystem in which consumers spend their money for information products and services; our pilots ficilitate the services, and the Biosense and Cropwatch platforms supply information consumers need to make intelligent business decisions.  Currently, the core of such ecosystem has gradually shifted from location-focused to platform-focused.  The demand for a low cost UAV platform for rapid deployment, noninvasive and contactless measurement of physiological functions is constantly on the rise.  Research has been carried out to utilize the radar technology, which is mainly used in aeronautical navigation and military applications, to acquire physiological information.  

Measuring physiological functions in a noncontact manner is useful for many industries including agriculture, healthcare, search & rescue, park mananagement, security, surveillance, and military.  And new radar technology can be used for this purpose.  In the Biosense project, we create a new method for detecting the heartbeat using impulse radar, which has advantages of low power consumption and harmlessness to the subject. The heart rate is extracted by processing the radar signal in the time domain and then using a principal component analysis of the time series data to indicate the phase variations that are caused by heartbeats. 

Our next phase is remote bio influence/control over physiological function from UAV's. This has the ability to change the face of medicine and engagement as we know it. 

Project development has been advancing for many years, and testing has been underway in rural and outback Australia since 2018.  In 2018, we received approval from the Northern Territory to fly/test UAV's along non-populated waterways and rivers to identify and record crocodiles and wildlife populations.  Further testing has been carried out in unpopulated outback South Australia.  The commitment to development is ongoing.