EHang’s EH216‑S transports ten blood bags over 1km as part of Helicus’ latest test flight in Belgium

Last week, a large two-seat pas­sen­ger drone trans­port­ed heavy med­ical car­go through Euro­pean air­space and adja­cent to a pop­u­lat­ed area. The drone flight was a com­plete­ly unmanned and auto­mat­ed mis­sion that trans­port­ed ten blood bags over more than one kilo­me­tre dis­tance at DronePort, close to the city of Sint-Tru­iden, Bel­gium.

The oper­a­tion and test flights were oper­at­ed by Bel­gian com­pa­ny Heli­cus, the first drone oper­a­tor in Europe to suc­cess­ful­ly per­form drone flights with human tis­sue and blood sam­ples over pop­u­lat­ed areas in the EU, Beyond the Visu­al Line of Sight of the pilot (BVLOS).

A First in Europe: Bel­gian hos­pi­tals tri­al deliv­ery drones to speed up trans­porta­tion of human tis­sue

The EH216‑S from EHang weighs 600 kg when ful­ly loaded, has as many as 16 elec­tric motors, reach­es a max­i­mum speed of 130 km/h and has a flight dis­tance with full pay­load of 30 km.

The organ­i­sa­tion of this test flight was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Heli­cus, EHang, DronePort and Blood Ser­vices of the Bel­gian Red Cross. The Bel­gian Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (BCAA), which had giv­en pri­or approval for this oper­a­tion fol­low­ing EU reg­u­la­tions, was also present to assess the course of the mis­sion.

As this was an unmanned, auto­mat­ed drone car­go flight, the pas­sen­ger drone fol­lowed a pre­de­fined flight path. Safe­ty pilots on the ground were on stand­by as an addi­tion­al safe­ty mea­sure to ensure a smooth and safe oper­a­tion.

EH216‑S’s flight data were inte­grat­ed into Heli­cus’ com­mand and con­trol cen­tre that takes care of cus­tomer order entry and ensures the so-called U‑Space ser­vices, includ­ing indi­vid­ual flight autho­ri­sa­tions required by EU reg­u­la­tions.

These pas­sen­ger drone flights also sup­port and are prepara­to­ry steps for the SAFIR-Ready project that is focused on advanc­ing U‑Space, based on col­lab­o­ra­tion and effec­tive expe­ri­ence build­ing in the EU. SAFIR-Ready is co-fund­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, man­aged by SESAR 3 JU, coor­di­nat­ed by Heli­cus, where part­ner EHang and advi­so­ry board mem­bers The Red Cross (French Com­mu­ni­ty), DronePort and Prox­imus col­lab­o­rat­ed to make it hap­pen.

Mikael Shamim, CEO of Heli­cus, com­ment­ed: “This flight was exe­cut­ed in line with EU leg­is­la­tion. It allowed us as air­line oper­a­tors and the civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties to build valu­able expe­ri­ence on how to safe­ly han­dle this type of oper­a­tion.”

Bel­gium Vice Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Mobil­i­ty, Georges Gilkinet, added: “Some mis­sions car­ried out by heli­copter or light air­craft can now be car­ried out by drones. This is why, as a pub­lic author­i­ty, we want to help the Bel­gian drone sec­tor, by estab­lish­ing a legal frame­work and devel­op­ing sim­ple, acces­si­ble pro­ce­dures for those wish­ing to devel­op the sec­tor.”

Hilde Vaut­mans, Mem­ber of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, con­tin­ued: “It is a fan­tas­tic dis­play of what inno­va­tion can achieve when peo­ple and com­pa­nies close­ly work togeth­er on a shared idea, with one com­mon goal.”