AURA: Design and Proof-of-Concept Evaluation of an Affordable Unified Robotic Architecture for Autonomous Safety Monitoring in Resource-Constrained Institutional Environments

AURA: Design and Proof-of-Concept Evaluation of an Affordable Unified Robotic Architecture for Autonomous Safety Monitoring in Resource-Constrained Institutional Environments | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article AURA: Design and Proof-of-Concept Evaluation of an Affordable Unified Robotic Architecture for Autonomous Safety Monitoring in Resource-Constrained Institutional Environments Nithin sai Bavaraju This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9453442/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Autonomous safety monitoring technology capable of fall detection, mobile patrol, and rapid incident response exists commercially, but is priced between USD 11,000 and USD 75,000 per unit. This cost profile systematically excludes the schools, rural clinics, and community centers where undetected safety incidents are most consequential. A low-cost, open-source, multi-modal robotic safety platform suitable for institutional deployment in resource-constrained environments has not previously been described or evaluated in the literature. We designed, fabricated, and conducted a proof-of-concept evaluation of AURA (Affordable Unified Robotic Architecture), an open-source safety monitoring platform integrating: (i) a 16-DOF servo-driven quadruped for enclosed-space and stairwell patrol; (ii) a Pixhawk PX4-guided quadrotor for complementary aerial coverage; (iii) a YOLOv5n fall detection module running at 18 fps on a Raspberry Pi 4 edge node with no cloud dependency; and (iv) a two-channel forearm surface electromyography (sEMG) command interface supporting operators with limited motor function. All custom structural components were CNC-fabricated from 3 mm ABS sheet. Proof-of-concept evaluation was conducted in an occupied three-story secondary educational building (2,840 m²) over a six-week period under institutional ethics oversight. Fall detection was benchmarked on the publicly available UR Fall Detection Dataset. sEMG recognition was evaluated across ten healthy adult participants (n = 10; age 19–58 years). Patrol coverage and incident response were evaluated across ten patrol cycles and twenty staged fall scenarios, respectively. The fall detection module achieved F1 = 94.3% on the UR benchmark and F1 = 91.7% on a site-collected test set (n = 45 staged falls) under challenging institutional lighting, with a mean end-to-end alert latency of 1.8 ± 0.3 s. The sEMG interface achieved mean five-class gesture recognition accuracy of 94.2 ± 2.7% across participants; two participants with self-reported reduced grip strength achieved 93.1–94.4% accuracy with the EMG interface versus 86.7–88.2% with keyboard input. Combined ground-aerial patrol coverage reached 93.6 ± 2.1% versus 81.4 ± 3.2% ground-only and 64.7 ± 4.8% aerial-only. Mean end-to-end incident response time was 24.1 ± 6.4 s with the drone in flight and 31.7 ± 9.2 s docked. Zero geofence violations were recorded across all aerial patrol cycles. Total dual-platform cost was USD 400, representing an 87% reduction against the nearest commercial alternative. These preliminary findings suggest that autonomous safety monitoring at proof-of-concept acceptability thresholds for fall detection, patrol coverage, and incident response may be achievable at a cost accessible to under-resourced institutions, warranting further investigation at larger scale. These proof-of-concept findings support the feasibility of the proposed architecture; multi-site longitudinal validation with larger participant samples is required before clinical deployment. All hardware designs, firmware configurations, trained model weights, and fabrication documentation are released under open-source licenses. fall detection autonomous mobile robot surface electromyography edge computing affordable robotics UAV patrol coverage safety monitoring Full Text Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-9453442","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":625245047,"identity":"33b1329d-fcbf-4069-96ed-674b8106189e","order_by":0,"name":"Nithin sai Bavaraju","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA7ElEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACAwbGBmYgycDAzNhw4AOQZmMnrKWxGaKFufHhDJAWZoJaGBibIUz2ZmMeEE1Ii7l0c/vjgoI79vztjG3SNr+2yfMxMzB++JiDW4vlnIONzTMMniXOOAzUktt327CNmYFZcuY2PA67kdjYzGNwOIEBrKXnNiNQCxszLxFa7OVBWix7btsTrYVxw2HGZmOGH7cTCWqxnJHYOBuoJXHjYcbGh70Nt5PbmBmb8frFXCL9wWeeP4ft5c4ff3Dgx5/btvPbmw9++IhHCypgbAOTDcSqB4E/pCgeBaNgFIyCkQIA/HtTrInPP9AAAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6998-694X","institution":"Wichita State University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Nithin","middleName":"sai","lastName":"Bavaraju","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-04-18 02:06:09","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":{"humanSubjects":false,"vertebrateSubjects":false,"conflictsOfInterestStatement":false,"humanSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false,"humanSubjectConsent":false,"humanSubjectClinicalTrial":false,"humanSubjectCaseReport":false,"vertebrateSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false},"doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9453442/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9453442/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":107489011,"identity":"a93ac0d6-c0fb-466c-92b4-f58c4ef5787b","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-22 02:46:27","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":571530,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"AURAPreprintReadyToPost11.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-9453442/v1_covered_965d251b-bff6-428c-b205-59889edfc23f.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"The authors declare no competing interests.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAURA: Design and Proof-of-Concept Evaluation of an Affordable Unified Robotic Architecture for Autonomous Safety Monitoring in Resource-Constrained Institutional Environments\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"fall detection, autonomous mobile robot, surface electromyography, edge computing, affordable robotics, UAV, patrol coverage, safety monitoring","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9453442/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9453442/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eAutonomous safety monitoring technology capable of fall detection, mobile patrol, and rapid incident response exists commercially, but is priced between USD 11,000 and USD 75,000 per unit. This cost profile systematically excludes the schools, rural clinics, and community centers where undetected safety incidents are most consequential. A low-cost, open-source, multi-modal robotic safety platform suitable for institutional deployment in resource-constrained environments has not previously been described or evaluated in the literature. We designed, fabricated, and conducted a proof-of-concept evaluation of AURA (Affordable Unified Robotic Architecture), an open-source safety monitoring platform integrating: (i) a 16-DOF servo-driven quadruped for enclosed-space and stairwell patrol; (ii) a Pixhawk PX4-guided quadrotor for complementary aerial coverage; (iii) a YOLOv5n fall detection module running at 18 fps on a Raspberry Pi 4 edge node with no cloud dependency; and (iv) a two-channel forearm surface electromyography (sEMG) command interface supporting operators with limited motor function. All custom structural components were CNC-fabricated from 3 mm ABS sheet. Proof-of-concept evaluation was conducted in an occupied three-story secondary educational building (2,840 m²) over a six-week period under institutional ethics oversight. Fall detection was benchmarked on the publicly available UR Fall Detection Dataset. sEMG recognition was evaluated across ten healthy adult participants (n = 10; age 19–58 years). Patrol coverage and incident response were evaluated across ten patrol cycles and twenty staged fall scenarios, respectively. The fall detection module achieved F1 = 94.3% on the UR benchmark and F1 = 91.7% on a site-collected test set (n = 45 staged falls) under challenging institutional lighting, with a mean end-to-end alert latency of 1.8 ± 0.3 s. The sEMG interface achieved mean five-class gesture recognition accuracy of 94.2 ± 2.7% across participants; two participants with self-reported reduced grip strength achieved 93.1–94.4% accuracy with the EMG interface versus 86.7–88.2% with keyboard input. Combined ground-aerial patrol coverage reached 93.6 ± 2.1% versus 81.4 ± 3.2% ground-only and 64.7 ± 4.8% aerial-only. Mean end-to-end incident response time was 24.1 ± 6.4 s with the drone in flight and 31.7 ± 9.2 s docked. Zero geofence violations were recorded across all aerial patrol cycles. Total dual-platform cost was USD 400, representing an 87% reduction against the nearest commercial alternative. These preliminary findings suggest that autonomous safety monitoring at proof-of-concept acceptability thresholds for fall detection, patrol coverage, and incident response may be achievable at a cost accessible to under-resourced institutions, warranting further investigation at larger scale. These proof-of-concept findings support the feasibility of the proposed architecture; multi-site longitudinal validation with larger participant samples is required before clinical deployment. All hardware designs, firmware configurations, trained model weights, and fabrication documentation are released under open-source licenses.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"AURA: Design and Proof-of-Concept Evaluation of an Affordable Unified Robotic Architecture for Autonomous Safety Monitoring in Resource-Constrained Institutional Environments","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-04-21 04:46:13","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9453442/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"b3fd72f8-9f5a-44ff-b52f-8bc988bec6ee","owner":[],"postedDate":"April 21st, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-04-21T04:46:14+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-04-21 04:46:13","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-9453442","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-9453442","identity":"rs-9453442","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}