Speeding up the most precious deliveries

PUBLIC HEALTH - SCIENCES & NEW TECHNOLOGIES

by THE OLBIOS TEAM

Meet the first drone delivery service of medical supplies

THE OLBIOS TEAM

The problem with delivering supplies to developing countries is that many areas don’t have the transportation infrastructure to navigate from place to place. Silicon Valley’s Singularity University-based start-up company Matternet , founded by Andreas Raptopoulos, is attempting to solve that problem with a network of stations that will hold unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that’ll help deliver payloads to small communities. These will carry a 1-kilogram load for 3 kilometers, although the target is for 10KM. The idea is that these will land in the villages and then have the locals swap out batteries so that the vehicle can continue moving from one place to another.

Today, Matternet, the developer of the world’s leading drone delivery system, announced it has begun test operations on a five-kilometer BVLOS (beyond-visual-line-of-sight) route over the city of Zurich, Switzerland. This route is the world’s longest drone delivery route over a major city and will be used to transport diagnostic samples between two hospitals in Zurich.

Using Matternet’s unmanned aircraft, transportation between the two hospitals and their laboratories takes just seven minutes. This test is demonstrating the potential for drones to provide fast, on-demand delivery for individual urgent shipments, without congesting Zurich roads or emitting CO2. Their drones transport medical items with secure end-to-end chain of custody and operate autonomously with remote supervision through Matternet’s Mission Control center in Zurich.