UAVs to transport medical supplies to Isle of Wight in response to coronavirus outbreak

A tri­al has begun to deliv­er med­ical sup­plies to an Isle of Wight hos­pi­tal from the UK main­land using UAVs, as the coun­try con­tin­ues its fight against the coro­n­avirus out­break.

UAV drone trans­porta­tion ser­vice Win­drac­ers is work­ing with Solent Trans­port to tri­al the ser­vice, which is the first of its kind and involves a Win­drac­ers ULTRA UAV drone fly­ing between St Mary’s Hos­pi­tal on the Isle of Wight and Southamp­ton Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, via the Solent Air­port.

In the ini­tial oper­a­tion, it will be car­ry­ing loads of no more than 40kg and the type of car­go will depend on the needs of the hos­pi­tal and be sub­ject to per­mis­sions grant­ed by the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty. The ULTRA plat­form uses an inno­v­a­tive high-reli­a­bil­i­ty avion­ics sys­tem devel­oped by its sis­ter com­pa­ny, Dis­trib­uted Avion­ics.

This method of tran­sit will act as back-up to the pre­vi­ous logis­tics sys­tem, which used fer­ry cross­ings to get across the Solent. Ser­vices are cur­rent­ly reduced because of the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, and Win­drac­ers has said its drones can com­plete a deliv­ery in just 20 min­utes.

Charles Scales, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Win­drac­ers, said: “We are very pleased that we are able to con­tribute to help­ing the NHS fight Covid-19.  This will be the first time a large UAV is used in shared air­space and inte­grat­ed with­in exist­ing logis­tics oper­a­tions in the UK. We are very proud to be part of this ground-break­ing project.”

The tri­al is part of the Future Trans­port Zone (FTZ) project,which is fund­ed by the Depart­ment for Trans­port to use the Win­drac­ers ULTRA UAV drone.

The dou­ble engine, fixed-winged air­craft has been built by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton and fea­tures a car­ry­ing capac­i­ty of up to 100kg, in a space around the size of an estate car boot. It can trav­el more than 1,000 km and will ulti­mate­ly be ful­ly auto­mat­ed, with­out the need for a pilot on the ground.

Stephen Wright, Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Win­drac­ers, said: “We have been work­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton for over three years to design and build the Win­drac­ers ULTRA UAV. 

“Our aim has always been to pro­vide a fast, cost-effec­tive ser­vice to trans­port human­i­tar­i­an aid, med­ical sup­plies or oth­er crit­i­cal mate­ri­als over long dis­tances, whether over land, water or hos­tile ter­rain and to deliv­er where oth­er vehi­cles or air­craft are unable to access.”

Mag­gie Old­ham, Chief Exec­u­tive of Isle of Wight NHS Trust, added: “Pro­vid­ing NHS ser­vices on an island comes with a num­ber of chal­lenges, so it is fan­tas­tic to see the progress being made to sup­port health care on the Isle of Wight through the use of new and inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy.”

Win­drac­ers pro­vides trans­porta­tion ser­vices to the human­i­tar­i­an aid, research and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion com­mu­ni­ties using UAVs.