Field Testing Medical Cargo Drones
WeRobotics recently teamed up with Emprende and other partners in the Dominican Republic (DR) to field test the delivery of cargo by drone. WeRobotics programmed the DR drones to transport medical supplies between local hospitals and remote villages in the mountains, several hours north of Santo Domingo.
In addition to the tests, the company provided local students and others with hands-on training on how to operate both multi-rotor drones and hybrid drones for cargo delivery. Building local capacity is central to their work at WeRobotics.
Transporting medicines and patient samples between hospitals (the red markers on the map) and remote clinics (green and purple markers) in the mountains of the DR can be slow and expensive. While roads to these remote clinics do exist, they are not always paved and those that are paved are sometimes impassable due to the rivers that cross them, even during the dry season. Furthermore, while the road network in the mountains of the DR is impressively widespread, the local ownership of motorised vehicles is certainly not, nor is the availability of public transportation.
Field tests
The field tests were carried out using two types of general-use drones that were adapted for cargo delivery: DJI’s M600 hexacopter drone and Vertical Technologies’ DeltaQuad, a new VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) fixed wing drone, also called a QuadPlane configuration.
A total of 31 complete flights were logged (not counting shorter test flights).
The types of cargo transported included items of up to 2kg including water, sample tubes, some medicines and even avocados and energy bars for testing purposes. The distances covered by the cargo drones ranged between 5 kilometers and 12 kilometers, with an altitude difference of up to 250 meters in altitude between takeoff and landing.
Three technical failures were experienced and exhaustively investigated.
These are detailed in the upcoming technical report. The growing healthcare needs in the DR coupled with expensive and slow cargo delivery options makes it clear that alternative solutions are needed. WeRobotics recent trainings and field tests in the DR confirm that cargo drones can be part of the solution.
That said, more field research needs to be carried out to identify the most compelling and sustainable delivery routes in the DR. This research is currently being conducted by Emprende in partnership with local universities.