The most valuable application yet may be as a new emergency service in Rwanda for delivering vital medical supplies, starting with blood.
A fleet of 15 drones will soon be buzzing around the vast country, bypassing the sub-standard road network, and making life-saving interventions.
The fixed-wing crafts are the product of Californian start-up Zipline, in partnership with delivery giants UPS and vaccine specialists the Gavi Alliance. The technology is cutting edge, but simple to use, according to Keller Rinaudo, Co-Founder of Zipline.
“(Users) send a text message and they’ll get a text message back saying the Zip has been discharged. They’ll be able to walk outside, see the delivery occur and have what they need to save the patient’s life,” he says.
“The accuracy of each delivery is extremely high and we’re actually able to deliver into their mailbox which is approximately the size of three parking spaces.”
The drones are controlled from an iPad that is programmed with coordinates and a flight plan, drawing on the delivery expertise of UPS.
When the drone arrives it ejects the payload with rubber bands, to float to earth on a mini parachute.
“We’ve put $800,000 into Zipline and this partnership to develop this service and we’ve invested a lot of our senior staff in terms of their logistics expertise,” says Laura Lane, President of Global Public Affairs at UPS. “We’ve got some of the most sophisticated mapping technologies and we’ve been testing these capabilities and so from our perspective it’s about mapping more of the Rwandan territory and making sure (the blood) gets delivered at that very point it should.”
The demand for such a service in Rwanda is clear, where trauma injuries and avoidable deaths through haemorrhaging after childbirth are relatively common, and the infrastructure for delivering and storing blood supplies is poor. Each delivery is projected to cost between $15 and $30, roughly the same as by motorbike.
