Skyports Drone Services and healthcare provider AZ Turnhout have launched an on-demand medical drone delivery trial in Kempen, Belgium.
Commencing this month, the service will be using drones to transport urgent medical cargo between the hospital campuses of AZ Turnhout St Jozef and AZ Herentals, using A-kwadraat as a central operational hub. The project will fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) and use a Remote Operations Centre (ROC) to pilot the drones.
Skyports has secured regulatory approval for the drones to be piloted remotely from Skyports’ Remote Operations Centre (ROC) in Buckinghamshire in the UK, which the company says will allow the delivery network to be scaled up.
Skeydrone is the designated U-space Service Provider (USSP) within the project, enabling the necessary flight authorisations and real-time air traffic monitoring, ensuring the operation can be conducted safely. Unifly provides the Unmanned Traffic Management system to Skeydrone, enabling real-time, compliant, and efficient drone operations within the U-space framework.
For the first stage of the project, Skyports will be flying the RigiTech Eiger and the Speedbird DLV-2. “The Eiger will be used to fly the A-kwadraat to AZ Herentals route, covering the 18.7km distance in 13 minutes (compared to 30 mins by road), flying with an average cruise speed of 29 m/s with a nominal operating altitude of 80m, with a max payload of 3kg,” the company said in an August 4 press release. “The DLV-2 will fly the A-kwadraat to St Jozef route, covering the 4.4km distance in 7 minutes (compared to 16 mins by road), flying with an average cruise speed of 16 m/s with a nominal operating altitude of 50m, with a max payload of 5kg.”
At the beginning of June, airspace receivers were installed on the roofs of all the hospitals in the region to help facilitate the drone operations, ensuring that the drones can integrate with existing crewed airspace. Precision landing QR barcodes have also been placed at each location to mark the automated drone landing sites.
For the first phase of the trial, the drones will be flying five days a week, with a longer term ambition to develop the first permanent medical drone delivery network in Belgium, providing automated drone delivery stations at the key hospital sights in Kempen which could be operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The trials are supported by the Belgium/Netherlands U-space Reference Design Implementation (BURDI) Project, which aims to ensure the safe and sustainable integration of multiple drone operations, including BVLOS, with traditional manned aviation. The project is co-funded by the European Union and SESAR Joint Undertaking.
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