Usually, remote operating command centres for drone technology have been associated with the rise in docked drones, where a pilot can keep an eye on several drones at once from a central command centre, regardless of where the drone is flying.
It could be across provincial or even state lines; as long as the drone can be linked to the command centre, it will fly for its mission successfully.
Swoop Aero – the now defunct drone logistics company that has been reborn as Kite Aero – was one of the first to fly delivery drones beyond the visual line of sight from a remote operating centre in Australia.
And now a UK-based drone services company will be joining them.
Skyports Drone Services, one of the world’s leading drone delivery and inspection services for healthcare, maritime, logistics and energy use cases, has struck a deal with Turnhout, Belgium-based healthcare services provider AZ Turnhout, to launch an on-demand medical drone delivery trial in the Kempen, north-east of the country.
Since the first of August, the drones the drones would have started transporting urgent medical cargo between the hospital campuses of AZ Turnhout St Jozef and AZ Herentals, using A-kwadraat as a central operational hub.
Flying Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) and using a Remote Operations Centre (ROC) to pilot the drones, the project aims to deliver urgent medical cargo faster and more efficiently than the current system of van and bike deliveries, which is slower and often constrained by delivery schedules.
But the major coup for this partnership is that Skyports has secured the regulatory approval for the drones to be piloted remotely from the company’s Remote Operations Centre (ROC) in Buckinghamshire in the UK, which will allow the delivery network to be scaled up easily, reducing delivery costs for the medical network.
“By transporting medical samples and medication quickly and reliably through the air, Skyports is enabling the future centralisation of laboratory activities in specialised hubs such as A-kwadraat,” said Jef Geudens, Head of Technology at Skyports.
“This means that not every hospital needs to invest in the same costly infrastructure. At the same time, this can help accelerate access to personalised treatments — such as patient-specific chemotherapy — which can be delivered faster and made available across multiple locations.”
For the first stage of the project Skyports will be flying the RigiTech Eiger and the, which will fly the A-kwadraat to AZ Herentals route, covering the 18.7km distance in thirteen minutes (compared to 30 mins by road), flying with an average cruise speed of 29m/s with a nominal operating altitude of 80m, with a max payload of 3kg.
The second part of the journey will be covered by the Speedbird DLV-2, from A-kwadraat to St Jozef route, covering the 4.4km distance in seven minutes (compared to sixteen mins by road), flying with an average cruise speed of 16m/s with a nominal operating altitude of 50m, with a max payload of 5kg.
“As a hospital, we are of course very enthusiastic about this project,” said Griet Braekmans, Director of Facilities and Project Manager at AZ Turnhout.
“For years, we’ve been working together with hospitals in the Kempen region and A-kwadraat in the areas of medication and pathology samples. Over the past five years, we’ve focused on organising transport between hospitals in an efficient and sustainable way.
“With drones, we can provide more personalized care for patients and improve collaboration between hospitals.”
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 be 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, seven days a week.