Finland: “Manna Air Delivery Collaborate with VTT For Research Initiative to Explore Health and Grocery Deliveries”

Man­na Air Deliv­ery, for­mer­ly known as Man­na Aero, announced this week a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Fin­land-based VTT, a lead­ing Euro­pean research insti­tu­tion, to explore both health-relat­ed and gro­cery drone deliv­er­ies around Fin­land, reports a press release.

The part­ner­ship brings togeth­er VTT’s tech­no­log­i­cal and logis­ti­cal exper­tise and Manna’s com­mer­cial expe­ri­ence. The Irish com­pa­ny has already com­plet­ed more than 200,000 com­mer­cial drone flights world­wide. A key focus of the project is to devel­op safe­ty and air­space man­age­ment solu­tions that enable large-scale adop­tion of drone deliv­er­ies in Finnish urban envi­ron­ments.

Jus­si Kan­ga­so­ja, Senior Sci­en­tist at VTT and part of the project, com­ment­ed, “Air deliv­ery can often be both the fastest and most reli­able option, espe­cial­ly in urban areas. Using drones to car­ry blood sam­ples between hos­pi­tals may become rou­tine and in times of cri­sis, even life-sav­ing.”

The aim is to explore in a more expan­sive and inte­grat­ed way the use of drones as a logis­tics solu­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly in sub­ur­ban areas, where con­ven­tion­al last-mile deliv­ery can be slow, cost­ly or con­gest­ed.

Present­ly, Man­na is deliv­er­ing gro­ceries in Espoo, Fin­land and aims to expand to oth­er North­ern Euro­pean ter­ri­to­ries.

Timo Lind, Prin­ci­pal Sci­en­tist at VTT, added, “The goal is to bring down­town ser­vices clos­er to res­i­dents, poten­tial­ly even to their doorstep. This could mean food, med­i­cine, lab sam­ples or oth­er every­day deliv­er­ies cur­rent­ly han­dled by bike couri­ers or vans. When logis­tics become sim­pler and faster, it opens new doors for com­plete­ly nov­el types of busi­ness.”

The research project will be part of a large Hous­ing Fair Exhi­bi­tion at Oulu, Fin­land.

Hous­ing Fair in Oulu, Fin­land. (con­cept image of area) cred­it: Hous­ing Fair/Profilm

While ear­ly drone deliv­er­ies have focused on piz­zas, gro­ceries and burg­ers, the poten­tial goes much fur­ther. A cen­tral aim of the part­ner­ship is to assess how drones can be applied to mis­sion-crit­i­cal soci­etal ser­vices such as logis­tics between health clin­ics and hos­pi­tals.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will also explore how dif­fer­ent forms of robot­ics could be inte­grat­ed, for exam­ple, com­bin­ing ground-based robot couri­ers with drones in the same logis­tics chain. The project will assess where aer­i­al trans­port offers the great­est advan­tage and where tra­di­tion­al routes are more effi­cient.

Bob­by Healy, CEO of Man­na Air Deliv­ery, remarked “VTT has done remark­able and pio­neer­ing work in the research and devel­op­ment of unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles, and Fin­land is renowned for its high-lev­el sci­en­tif­ic com­pe­tence. In addi­tion, the country’s vari­able weath­er and diverse urban struc­ture pro­vide an excel­lent test­ing ground for real-world appli­ca­tions.”

He con­tin­ued, “That’s why a Finnish part­ner­ship is so valu­able to us, We are not just look­ing for tests, we’re seek­ing real-world learn­ings to sup­port our grow­ing oper­a­tions.”

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Man­na has already demon­strat­ed that drone deliv­ery can be a prof­itable busi­ness. Now, the joint goal is to cre­ate solu­tions that sup­port not only smart city ser­vices, but also the pub­lic sec­tor, includ­ing pre­pared­ness for pan­demics and emer­gency response.

Healy point­ed out, “Once peo­ple expe­ri­ence drone deliv­er­ies, they don’t go back. It’s cru­cial that drone tech­nol­o­gy evolves in step with society’s needs, and that com­mer­cial oper­a­tions also sup­port crit­i­cal pub­lic ser­vices.” 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.manna.aero

https://www.vttresearch.com/en

(Top image: Bob­by Healy — Pho­to: Mark Con­dren)

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