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Scandinavia: Drones, Fiords and eVTOLs

Scan­di­navia is not a region to con­jure up images of drones and eVTOLs fly­ing over­head. What with all that Win­ter snow and ice, rugged moun­tain­ous areas and long, deep, daunt­ing fiords, the ter­rain doesn’t seem suit­able for the sen­si­tive tech­nolo­gies required.

Yet and sur­pris­ing­ly, Scan­di­navia refus­es to be left behind in the green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion with var­i­ous com­pa­nies already stak­ing a claim. That Viking ances­try which once ruled the seas is now resur­fac­ing and look­ing to the skies.

So, who are some of these intre­pid com­pa­nies?

Let’s start with drones and A for Aviant. Found­ed in 2020, the company’s founders met at the esteemed Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIT), an ide­al back­ground for such a busi­ness.

Based in Trond­heim, Nor­way, these founders are Lars Erik Fager­naes, Her­man Oie Kold­en and Bern­hard Paus Graes­dal. The com­pa­ny emerged as a response to the Covid-19 lock­down and the need to deliv­er essen­tial health­care.

An inau­gur­al flight took place in Feb­ru­ary 2021 which led to set­ting up a suc­cess­ful drone deliv­ery ser­vice for a major Nor­we­gian dairy pro­duc­er, quick­ly fol­lowed by the trans­porta­tion of med­ical sup­plies includ­ing sam­ple spec­i­mens and equip­ment for St Olavs Hos­pi­tal in Trond­heim. More recent­ly, Aviant received EUR1 mil­lion fund­ing from ‘Inno­va­tion Nor­way’ adding to the exist­ing EUR2.3 mil­lion invest­ment via a seed round led by Lumi­nar Ven­tures and Bring Ven­tures last Sep­tem­ber. At present, the com­pa­ny has con­duct­ed more than 2,500 autonomous flights, cov­er­ing over 35,000 km.

The Aviant Team (Cred­it: Aviant)

Aviant sees itself as an impor­tant play­er in the Euro­pean drone mar­ket. Focus has now turned towards enhanc­ing their flag­ship ser­vice, Kyte, for the lucra­tive home deliv­ery mar­ket.

https://kyte.delivery/

Please Watch Videos

Com­pared to oth­er drone deliv­ery com­pa­nies like Wing or Man­na, Aviant’s craft are able to fly up to 120 km in a straight line, result­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er deliv­ery range. Kyte is able to deliv­er with­in a 30 km radius for return flights, rather than the 2–3 km range of oth­er providers.

Cus­tomers are able to request deliv­ery using the Kyte App, select­ing from a range of gro­ceries, meals and med­i­cines. After the order is placed, the drones are loaded at its home base, before autonomous­ly deliv­er­ing the order and then return­ing. To date, Kyte has com­plet­ed deliv­er­ies cov­er­ing over 4,000 km, with an aver­age deliv­ery time of 24 min­utes.

Aviant’s CEO, Fager­naes, remarked, “Door-to-door drone deliv­ery is a hot top­ic, but most com­mer­cial attempts have been lim­it­ed to small, open areas such as a sin­gle park or tech­nol­o­gy that lim­its the radius to 2–3 kms, where get­ting a com­mer­cial last-mile deliv­ery ser­vice up and run­ning has proven extreme­ly dif­fi­cult. That changes with Kyte.”

He con­tin­ued, “We have a large deliv­ery radius, the per­mits to oper­ate, and no require­ments for pilots or spot­ters along the route. We are actu­al­ly deliv­er­ing food, gro­ceries and med­i­cine by drone to people’s doorsteps in Nor­way right now.”

Giv­en the moun­tain­ous and remote Nor­we­gian areas, once the weath­er is nav­i­gat­ed, BVLOS drone deliv­ery is ide­al, espe­cial­ly when rur­al road clo­sures are com­mon in Win­ter. Fager­naes point­ed out, “We are able to pro­vide peo­ple in remote and hard-to-reach areas with the gro­ceries and med­ical sup­plies they need, direct­ly to their doorstep, with no traf­fic restric­tions and min­i­mal cli­mate emis­sions.”

Aviant intends to open a sec­ond base in Nor­way lat­er this year, allow­ing it to serve 20,000 to 30,000 remote hol­i­day homes with door-to-door deliv­er­ies. The company’s vision is to bring drone home deliv­ery to most of Nor­way, as well as oth­er Euro­pean mar­kets. The com­pa­ny is cer­ti­fied under EU reg­u­la­tions to oper­ate autonomous flights with­in the Union.

Anett Berg­er Sør­li, Bring Ven­tures Invest­ment Man­ag­er, com­ment­ed, “We invest­ed in Aviant because we see drone deliv­ery as cen­tral to the future of logis­tics, and being able to launch Kyte with­in such a short time­frame shows how dri­ven this team is to lead us to that future.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.aviant.no

Per­haps, bet­ter known is Swe­den-based drone com­pa­ny Ever­drone, after becom­ing famous last year for sav­ing a man’s life with a rapid deliv­ery of a defib­ril­la­tor. This was the world’s first.

Please Read the Sto­ry and Then Watch the Video

https://everdrone.com/news/2022/01/04/for-the-first-time-in-medical-history-an-autonomous-drone-helps-save-the-life-of-a-cardiac-arrest-patient

The inci­dent has great­ly helped Ever­drone to extend its life-sav­ing ‘First on Scene Solu­tions’ (FOSS) deliv­ery, by employ­ing drones to fly auto­mat­ed exter­nal defib­ril­la­tors (AED) and pro­vide sup­port to first respon­ders around Swe­den, in par­tic­u­lar, to the vast Väs­tra Göta­land Coun­ty.

The com­pa­ny has been work­ing with the region’s Admin­is­tra­tive Coun­cil since 2020, and that co-oper­a­tion has now been assured with a new round of financ­ing for 2023 and beyond.

Ever­drone is ded­i­cat­ed to pub­lic safe­ty and emer­gency response and epit­o­mis­es the “Drones for Good” cul­ture. Work­ing with local gov­ern­ments and first respon­der organ­i­sa­tions, the company’s FOSS now cov­ers a pop­u­la­tion of 340,000.

Mats Säll­ström, the company’s CEO, said, “We are not stop­ping there. We are com­mit­ted to expand­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of our drones and improv­ing our ser­vices. Our cur­rent fastest deliv­ery time is two min­utes and 27 sec­onds, and we aim to improve it fur­ther by reduc­ing flight time by up to 60 sec­onds in the com­ing year. This is just the begin­ning.”

Mats Säll­ström (Cred­it: Ever­drone)

Mag­nus Kris­tians­son, Väs­tra Götaland’s Inno­v­a­tive Plat­form Man­ag­er, added, “Now we can devel­op the func­tion­al­i­ties even more includ­ing sys­tem inno­va­tion and increased know-how on air space reg­u­la­tions. I am con­fi­dent that AED deliv­er­ies, as well as addi­tion­al ben­e­fits from drone deliv­er­ies, can be imple­ment­ed on a more per­ma­nent basis.”

As part of their con­tin­u­ing coop­er­a­tion, Väs­tra Göta­land is exam­in­ing extend­ed use of Everdrone’s Live­View appli­ca­tion, a real-time aer­i­al video stream of emer­gency scenes that pro­vides respon­ders with vital, time-sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion they can imme­di­ate­ly put to use on arrival. Tri­als show that Everdrone’s deliv­ery of AEDs is much faster than ambu­lances, where rapid response time is crit­i­cal, with the chances of sur­vival decreas­ing between 7 per­cent and 10 per­cent each minute a stopped heart can­not be restart­ed.

Out-of-hos­pi­tal heart attacks account for around 20 per­cent of all deaths in devel­oped nations, due to mor­tal­i­ty rates of near­ly 90 per­cent in those sit­u­a­tions. Car­diac arrest out­side of clin­i­cal envi­ron­ments strike around 275,000 patients in Europe each year and 350,000 in the US. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://everdrone.com/

Swe­den remains in the spot­light with drone deliv­ery start-up Aer­it. Last Decem­ber, it com­plet­ed a two week pilot project cov­er­ing house­holds from Gräd­dö and Tjockö across a 38 square mile area in Nor­rtäl­je, Swe­den. The BVLOS flights pro­vid­ed on-demand gro­cery and prod­uct deliv­ery to res­i­den­tial homes in the area.

Fund­ed by Sweden’s inno­va­tion agency, Vin­no­va, the project was a joint effort between Aer­it, ICAx, Research Insti­tutes of Swe­den and Nor­rtäl­je Kom­mun to eval­u­ate the ben­e­fits of drone deliv­ery as well as study pub­lic recep­tion to the ser­vices. The deliv­er­ies took place over six days in extreme weath­er con­di­tions includ­ing snow and tem­per­a­tures below ‑10°C.

Aer­it Nim­bi Drone (Cred­it: Aer­it)

Alex Per­rien, CEO of Aer­it, enthused, “The tri­al has been an unqual­i­fied suc­cess. We reli­ably pro­vid­ed access to goods and ser­vices in harsh weath­er con­di­tions to loca­tions that nor­mal­ly require sev­er­al modes of trans­porta­tion to reach. We have replaced short car and boat trips to the store with Nim­bi flights, reduc­ing trav­el time while improv­ing safe­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

These Nim­bi deliv­ery drones, designed and built by Aer­it, are bat­tery-pow­ered with a max­i­mum pay­load capac­i­ty of 10 lbs. The craft fea­tures a winch­ing sys­tem that allows for both pack­age pick­up and drop-off with­out the need for sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture.

Found­ed in Jan­u­ary 2021, Aerit’s accom­plish­ments include reg­u­la­to­ry approval for oper­a­tions under the EASA SORA frame­work and the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of Sweden’s first com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery of food in Octo­ber 2021. The com­pa­ny has been launch­ing fur­ther deliv­ery ser­vices around select areas of Swe­den dur­ing this year.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://aerit.io

Not to be out­done, Den­mark has also car­ried out drone deliv­ery tri­als going back to 2019, after the country’s Health­Drone project was formed sup­port­ed by a DKK30 mil­lion Inno­va­tion Fund to cov­er a three-year pilot project.

This led to var­i­ous tri­als includ­ing fly­ing blood sam­ples and med­ical equip­ment between Odense, Svend­borg and Ærø as part of a pro­gram to inte­grate drones in to the Dan­ish health care sys­tem. Such deliv­er­ies are expect­ed to save around DKK200 mil­lion a year. Denmark’s Lead­ing health­care organ­i­sa­tion, Fal­ck, is par­tic­u­lar­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the future of drone deliv­ery.

Jakob Riis, CEO of Fal­ck, com­ment­ed, “As an active part­ner in the Dan­ish health­care sys­tem, we are deeply involved in devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive sys­tems to find solu­tions to improve the country’s health­care and make us more effec­tive to help patients. Drone deliv­ery is a ground­break­ing devel­op­ment.”

UAS Den­mark Test Cen­tre (© Michael Yde Kat­balle)

Mean­while, the UAS Den­mark Test Cen­tre offers pro­duc­tion and test facil­i­ties in their 1,900 km² seg­re­gat­ed air­space. The cen­tre is locat­ed at Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Air­port in Odense, where Dan­ish and inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, research insti­tu­tions and the Dan­ish Defense can test and devel­op their UAS oper­a­tions.

Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty offers 2,100 square metres of research facil­i­ties for com­plex tech­nol­o­gy research and includes one of the largest drone cages as well as exper­i­men­tal wind tun­nel labs in Europe. Den­mark is also home to a strong nation­al clus­ter for robot­ics, automa­tion and drones named ‘Odense Robot­ics’.

Even Ice­land became involved in drone deliv­ery. In fact, it was the first Scan­di­na­vian coun­try, after com­pa­ny Aha.is offered deliv­er­ies back in 2018. Three years lat­er the com­pa­ny was award­ed the SA Con­fed­er­a­tion of Ice­landic Enter­prise prize for the envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tive of the year. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, no fur­ther news of the com­pa­ny has appeared since.

On to eVTOLs and Swedish com­pa­ny, Jet­son Aero, man­u­fac­tures one of the bet­ter known per­son­al air­craft called the ‘Jet­son ONE’.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jetsonaero.com

Please Watch Video

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Y_oX9VVLhNA

Mean­while, back in Feb­ru­ary of this year, Denmark’s Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Air­port (HCA) from Odense announced a part­ner­ship with Copen­hagen Heli­copters to be the first in the coun­try to build an infra­struc­ture for eVTOLs to fly peo­ple between Den­mark’s largest cities. The ini­tial aim is to estab­lish a ver­ti­port on top of Odense Cen­tral Sta­tion and to fly an eVTOL over Funen.

Kim Ken­lev, Chair of HCA spec­u­lat­ed, “I fore­see that in a few years’ time you can take the light rail to Odense Sta­tion and from there a fly­ing taxi to Copen­hagen or oth­er Dan­ish cities.” He con­tin­ued, “I see noth­ing stop­ping us from fly­ing to cities like Gothen­burg, Ham­burg or Berlin in the future. Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty is high on the agen­da every­where, and these cities are with­in reach of these fly­ing taxis.”

The part­ner­ship wants to attract for­eign AAM oper­a­tors to HCA Air­port, which already hosts the UAS Den­mark Test Cen­tre.

Mar­tin Ander­sen, CEO of Copen­hagen Heli­copter, stat­ed, “Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty offers a whole new oppor­tu­ni­ty to trans­port peo­ple on a dai­ly basis via the skies. Our cal­cu­la­tions sug­gest that the AAM area has huge poten­tial and could trans­port 84,000 pas­sen­gers a day and remove 120,000 tonnes of CO2 from Dan­ish roads by 2035.”

Odense Rail­way Sta­tion

Last month, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty and Oslo-based Widerøe Zero announced a Let­ter of Intent (LOI) to extend their exist­ing asso­ci­a­tion by launch­ing up to 50 of Eve’s air­craft across Scan­di­navia along­side an imple­men­ta­tion of the company’s Urban Air Traf­fic soft­ware solu­tion by the end of this decade, to opti­mise the effi­cien­cy of Widerøe Zero’s UAM flight oper­a­tions.

Andre Stein, Co-CEO of Eve, said, “This clos­er part­ner­ship builds upon a pre­vi­ous Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing signed in 2021 at the UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence (COP26), which aimed to devel­op eVTOL oper­a­tions in Scan­di­navia.”

Widerøe Zero is an air mobil­i­ty incu­ba­tor set up for the impend­ing avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion and is owned by the Avi­a­tion Group, Widerøe AS.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wideroezero.com

Back to Nor­way and AAP Avi­a­tion Group signed a deal with Lil­i­um at last year’s Farn­bor­ough Air­show to pur­chase 40 sev­en-seater Lil­i­um Jets for their fleet when con­struct­ed. The com­pa­ny also intends to devel­op a net­work of ver­ti­ports and gen­er­al land­ing sites across Scan­di­navia. The air­line com­pa­ny says the Jet flights of up to 156 miles will sup­ple­ment exist­ing region­al routes.

The Lil­i­um eVTOL will fly at speeds of close to 175 mph. The man­u­fac­tur­er believes it can scale the design for a ver­sion that could accom­mo­date between 10 and 15 seats.

Espen Høl­by, CEO of AAP, remarked, “Due to the mix of water, ter­rain, and moun­tains, Nor­way is par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed to region­al air mobil­i­ty. With its ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing capa­bil­i­ty, high speed, and region­al range, the Lil­i­um Jet can achieve hours of time sav­ings com­pared with today’s trans­porta­tion modes.”

Lil­i­um Jet Sev­en-Seater eVTOL (Cred­it: Lil­i­um)

So, Scan­di­navia is no slouch when it comes to Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, where its rugged and, at times, remote and inhos­pitable ter­rain actu­al­ly ben­e­fits both the drone and eVTOL indus­tries.

Not so much the long­ship, but the elec­tric air­ship.

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