Bengaluru: Trials for India’s first medical drone delivery starts from June 18

Bengaluru: This week in Gauribidanur, some 80 km from Bengaluru, India’s first official beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)medical drone experiment is scheduled to begin.

Even though the consortium of firms led by Bengaluru’s Throttle Aerospace Systems (TAS) had got approval from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for delivery experiments in March 2020, it had been delayed due to the pandemic and consequent lockdowns and some other permissions from agencies.

As the firm has secured all clearances, it will now carry out the first set of trials for 30-45 days, beginning from June 18. Dr Devi Shetty, cardiac surgeon and Narayana Health will be attending the trials and will be providing the medicines to transport during the same.

“Two other consortia also have permission for BVLOS experiments, but ours is the first legal/official medical drone delivery experiment. We have come a long way since 2016 and are at a pivotal moment. After a long wait, we now have an official go-ahead from the BVLOS Experiment Monitoring Committee (BEMC) and we look forward to leveraging commercial drone delivery in India soon”, said Nagendran Kandaswamy, CEO, TAS.

Besides TAS, the consortium has Involi-Swiss, which specialises in air traffic awareness systems for professional drone applications, which is providing unmanned traffic management (UTM) systems, and Honeywell Aerospace as a safety expert.

The consortium will use two variants of its drone, namely- MedCoPTER and TAS’ on-demand delivery software called RANDINT- during the experiment.

Kandaswamy said, “The smaller variant of MedCOPTER can carry 1 kg for up to 15 km, while the other can carry 2 kg for up to 12 km. We will be testing both for range and safety through the 30-45 days, during which we have to fly for at least 100 hours as per DGCA. We are aiming to fly for around 125 hours. The logs will be reviewed and submitted to the authorities at the end of the trial.”

He also explained that Narayana Health’s partnership was to observe what kind of medicines could be transported using drones, what could be the challenges and also if they can be used in future.

He said, “Our software will receive the demand raised by Narayana. Nobody will know who the recipient is, but the delivery will be made to the pre-loaded address.”

Apart from Narayana, Udaan, the B2B e-commerce startup has also come up to the consortium for information on the commercial front. Kandaswamy said, “They are the other user partners. They are interested in knowing the per kilometre cost and other such commercial aspects of object delivery.”