VIDEO: Watch “Pilot’s Eye View” of Scotland’s Angus medical delivery drone on trial flight from Stracathro to Dundee

Scot­land is at the fore­front of drone deliv­ery tri­als and Scot­tish media out­let thecourier.co.uk scores a scoop for post­ing an intrigu­ing 4 minute long video (sped up) of “a pilot’s eye view” of med­ical drone flights present­ly being tri­alled between Angus and Dundee. Watch it on Fullscreen for the best effect.

Watch Video:

VIDEO: Watch pio­neer­ing Angus med­ical deliv­ery drone on a tri­al flight from Stra­cathro to Dundee

This lat­est tri­al, launched ten days ago, is a two-month NHS Tay­side pro­gram to test the effec­tive­ness of using drones to fly items such as blood sam­ples and med­i­cine to and from Ninewells Hos­pi­tal. It is a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship between Angus Coun­cil and drone com­pa­ny DTLX, to estab­lish Scotland’s first drone port in Mon­trose.

The video fol­lows a flight between Brechin and Dundee. The craft is pro­grammed to fly with­in a defined seg­re­gat­ed air space cor­ri­dor, 1,300 ft wide and at a height of up to 400 ft. It trav­els at speeds of up to 60mph and is oper­at­ed Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS). The drone can car­ry a pay­load close to 11 lbs. Flights are oper­at­ing between 4pm and 7pm in the trial’s open­ing phase.

Richard Stark, Direc­tor of DTLX, com­ments, “The tech­nol­o­gy is not a prob­lem, the chal­lenge is in meet­ing the reg­u­la­tions, so it’s tak­en us 18 months to get the route approved.”

He con­tin­ues, “The oper­a­tor fol­lows the entire flight on screen. They don’t have a joy­stick con­troller, but have pre-deter­mined func­tions which can change the jour­ney to make it cir­cle, return home or make an emer­gency land­ing at an alter­na­tive loca­tion. Rain gen­er­al­ly isn’t a prob­lem and it can fly in up to 35mph winds.”

Richard Stark/Credit DTLX

The tri­al is using Sky­ports drones. There are two approved fly­ing cor­ri­dors. One from Mon­trose to Stra­cathro and the oth­er Stra­cathro to Ninewells. Flight times take around 30 min­utes.

Stark explains, “We wish to allay any fears the local pop­u­la­tion might have around the use of deliv­ery drones. And we want to prove to the avi­a­tion com­mu­ni­ty they’ve got a pur­pose and are use­ful.”

He con­tin­ues, “We’ll gath­er the data that should allow us to make the case for it to be done across the whole of Angus.” Adding, “This is just the first phase in our longer project as part of the Mer­cury Drone Port.”

Mer­cury is Scotland’s first drone port to be cre­at­ed as part of the Zero­Four inno­va­tion hub at Mon­trose.

Meet the Angus busi­ness­men cre­at­ing Scotland’s first drone port in Mon­trose

(News Source: https://www.thecourier.co.uk/)

(Top image cred­it: Mhairi Edwards/DCThomson)