Delivery Drones

Zipline to undertake blood drone trial in Tanzania funded by UK Government

zipline plane and launcher

Delivery of medical or humanitarian supplies is perhaps the only delivery drone use-case that makes sense. Well done to Zipline then for securing another trial.

The UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) is to fund the next trial in Tanzania.

A DFID spokeswoman told the BBC: “Flights are planned to start in early 2017, and when they do it is estimated that [the] UAVs could support over 50,000 births a year, cutting down the time mothers and new-borns would have to wait for life-saving medicine to 19 minutes – reduced from the 110 minutes traditional transport methods would take,”

I will have to admit that I was skeptical of one-way delivery flights, Zipline seems to be proving me wrong. It will be interesting to see what end users have to say about these trials in a year’s time.

 

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