Quantum-Systems delivers Covid-19 tests using eVTOL drone in less than seven minutes

Advanced drone devel­op­er Quan­tum-Sys­tems has used one of its eVTOL drones to help deliv­er Covid-19 tests to a Munich lab­o­ra­to­ry in less than sev­en min­utes.

Work­ing with Beck­er & Kol­le­gen, the test involved using Quan­tum-Sys­tems’ Trin­i­ty F90+ drone to trans­port 20 sam­ple tubes over the 6.4km dis­tance between a mobile Covid-19 test sta­tion on the There­sien­wiese in Munich to the lab­o­ra­to­ry in Frührich­straße.

The couri­er dri­ver who reg­u­lar­ly makes the ride between the test sta­tion and the lab­o­ra­to­ry often takes an hour or more to trav­el by van. He has rarely car­ried more than 15 urgent test sam­ples and Quan­tum-Sys­tems says using a drone as a method of trans­porta­tion is 8–12 times faster, emis­sion-free and noise­less.

Robert Hirt, Chief Dig­i­tal Offi­cer at Lab­o­ra­to­ry Beck­er & Kol­le­gen, said: “As part of our vision of a No-Touch Sam­ple Dis­tri­b­u­tion (NTSD), our ini­tia­tive with Quan­tum-Sys­tems makes an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­cus­sion on how we can use automa­tion and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to fur­ther reduce ana­log touch points and the asso­ci­at­ed poten­tial dan­ger to humans.”

“I am con­cerned about the indi­vid­ual behind each sam­ple and the well-being of the patient in terms of the qual­i­ty and speed of the find­ings,” added Marc Beck­er, M.D of Beck­er & Kol­le­gen.

“In this par­tic­u­lar case, how­ev­er, it is also about reduc­ing risks for the many peo­ple involved in the pro­vi­sion of our lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices, such as doc­tors, couri­er ser­vices and assis­tants.”

Quan­tum-Sys­tems already has expe­ri­ence in trans­port­ing very sen­si­tive med­ical pay­loads by drone, for which fur­ther strict require­ments must be met.

In South Africa, the com­pa­ny deliv­ers its tech­nol­o­gy for the Blood­Wing project of the South African Nation­al Blood Ser­vice (SANBS). Using a Tron F90+ UAV, it trans­ports blood bags from blood banks to remote hos­pi­tals.

To do so, one must com­ply with the respec­tive legal require­ments for the trans­port of drugs or med­i­cine. For exam­ple, the trans­port box must ful­fil cer­tain hygien­ic and cli­mate demands. In addi­tion, the trans­port must be secure and com­plete­ly trace­able, access to the box must be pos­si­ble for autho­rised per­sons only.

And in order to fur­ther advance the tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion in the use of drones for med­ical pur­pos­es, Quan­tum-Sys­tems is cur­rent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ten­der for a project fund­ed by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Trans­port and Dig­i­tal Infra­struc­ture (BMVI). Sub­ject of the inves­ti­ga­tion is how changes in drug logis­tics can lead to sig­nif­i­cant cost reduc­tions for hos­pi­tals.

It has already been award­ed a research con­tract for anoth­er BMVI fund­ing project called ‘FreeRail’, which involves the auto­mat­ed record­ing of veg­e­ta­tion near the track and storm dam­age along Deutsche Bahn’s rail net­work using the Trin­i­ty F90+ drone.

In order to com­ply with the pre­scribed road safe­ty oblig­a­tions, the veg­e­ta­tion along the entire rail net­work must be inspect­ed, doc­u­ment­ed and eval­u­at­ed by qual­i­fied per­son­nel at least once a year. At the same time, rail traf­fic should not be dis­rupt­ed dur­ing inspec­tion.

The Trin­i­ty F90+ drone takes off and lands ful­ly auto­mat­i­cal­ly from a self-suf­fi­cient drone port, which will be per­ma­nent­ly sta­tioned close to the rail­way line. Using a spe­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion and data pro­cess­ing sys­tem, the col­lect­ed data can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly eval­u­at­ed. The project offers Quan­tum-Sys­tems the pos­si­bil­i­ty to col­lect and eval­u­ate expe­ri­ences with autonomous BVLOS flights under real con­di­tions.

Flo­ri­an Seibel, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Quan­tum-Sys­tems, said: “For us, the devel­op­ment of the Drone Port is a log­i­cal step towards the automa­tion and digi­ti­sa­tion of flight mis­sions. In the end, the drone will trans­mit infor­ma­tion and data for fur­ther deci­sion mak­ing. With our tech­nol­o­gy, we deliv­er this infor­ma­tion just in time.”