Medical supplies and Covid-19 test kits to be delivered via drone to vessels at sea in UK’s first proof of concept trial

A UK-first proof of con­cept tri­al to deliv­er med­ical sup­plies – includ­ing Covid-19 test kits – to ves­sels at sea is to be held at Mon­trose Port in Scot­land this week.

Project MediDrone, which uses remote­ly oper­at­ed unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs), or drones, was fund­ed by a UK Gov­ern­ment inno­va­tion grant and will involve the air­craft depart­ing the quay­side from Mon­trose and land­ing on a ves­sel in the North Sea. Weath­er per­mit­ting, the flight will take place at mid­day on this Thurs­day.

If suc­cess­ful, the tri­al could open up the oppor­tu­ni­ty for Covid-19 tests and oth­er med­ical sup­plies to be deliv­ered to and from ves­sels with­out them need­ing to dock or be board­ed by har­bour pilots. This will fur­ther reduce any risk of infec­tion being brought back to shore and into the com­mu­ni­ty.

The tri­als are being coor­di­nat­ed by tech­nol­o­gy firm Neu­ron Inno­va­tions Ltd in part­ner­ship with ‘drone-in-a-box’ provider Herotech8 and insur­ance and risk man­age­ment spe­cial­ists Flock.

Niall Green­wood, CEO at Neu­ron, said that Mon­trose was cho­sen for its loca­tion, facil­i­ties, and the man­age­ment team’s for­ward-think­ing approach.

He said: “We are delight­ed to be lead­ing the Mon­trose Drone tri­als, to enable the deliv­ery of med­ical sup­plies from shore to ship. Drones offer a much safer, faster, and more cost-effec­tive method of deliv­ery com­pared with more tra­di­tion­al approach­es.

“By con­nect­ing the drone to Neuron’s sur­veil­lance net­work we have made a sig­nif­i­cant step to enabling these kinds of appli­ca­tions on a rou­tine basis. The data from our net­works pro­vide the drone pilot with the abil­i­ty to remote­ly observe near­by air­craft so that they can keep the drone safe­ly sep­a­rat­ed from them”

Herotech8’s ‘drone-in-a-box’ solu­tion com­pris­es an auto­mat­ed recharg­ing sta­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion relay which allows the drone to be oper­at­ed remote­ly and on-demand by a pilot sit­u­at­ed at their offices at Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty.

The drone auto­mat­i­cal­ly takes off and lands and fol­lows pre-pro­grammed way­points dur­ing its flight. The pilot is there just to mon­i­tor the drone dur­ing the flight to ensure the safe­ty of the pub­lic and oth­er air­space users.

Hamish Mur­ray, Projects Team Leader at Mon­trose Port Author­i­ty, said: “Secur­ing this tri­al is a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty for Mon­trose and adds to the grow­ing list of inno­v­a­tive projects going on with­in the port and the broad­er local com­mu­ni­ty.

“We already work close­ly with the team behind the pro­posed Mon­trose Drone Port and as well as using our quay­side for the tri­als, our pilot boat and oth­er port per­son­nel will also be heav­i­ly involved.

“With our grow­ing rep­u­ta­tion with­in the off­shore wind indus­try, as well as tra­di­tion­al oil and gas and gen­er­al car­go, we can see drones poten­tial­ly becom­ing a com­mon sight in the skies above the port and at sea, and I’m glad that we are able to play such a piv­otal role in help­ing shape the future of this excit­ing tech­nol­o­gy.”

The tri­al was made pos­si­ble by a grant from UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI’s) Future Flight Chal­lenge. The consortium’s aim is to demon­strate how the safe­ty and effi­cien­cy of ports can be improved using drones to reduce the num­ber of trips to ves­sels by pilot boats which can take hours to com­plete and are made dan­ger­ous by the crew hav­ing to climb a rope lad­der from one ves­sel to anoth­er.

Sam Gold­en at Flock added: “This tri­al paves the way for wide­spread use of drones for ship to shore deliv­ery. We are show­ing how drones can improve safe­ty, cut costs and increase effi­cien­cy in ports glob­al­ly.

“I’m grate­ful to the UK gov­ern­ment for sup­port­ing this tri­al and to Neu­ron for bring­ing togeth­er best-in-class com­pa­nies to deliv­er on it. Great things can hap­pen when com­pa­nies are giv­en the space to col­lab­o­rate.”