Overview
AirMediDelivery is a midrange delivery drone system developed by the consortium of Estrato Ltd. and Ulyssys Ltd. Its main purpose is delivering small but urgent medical shipments between medical institutions avoiding road jams. Intended cargo may range from life saving medicaments through samples of blood, urine or human tissues to blood products and valuable medical ingredients stored in central medical institutions.
Development of AirMediDelivery has started in 2019 in co-operation with the Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County Central Hospital and University Teaching Hospital in Miskolc, North-East Hungary. It consist of software components and UAS developed by third parties. The core component of the system is a server based traffic control application receiving customer orders, scheduling UAVs, planning and controlling missions. Low level interfaces for communicating with future UTM services and digital flight communication systems are built in the software.
Delivery routes are generated along predefined route sections, all subject to a detailed risk analysis. A dispatcher interface allows a human operator to modify routes in-flight. Each UAV is controlled by a dedicated copy of a custom developed groundstation application via cheap and practically omnipresent LTE 4G communication. Safe secondary control link is provided in the form of the highly reliable iridium satellite system. AirMediDelivery is capable of fully autonomous operation but all tests are performed under constant mandatory surveillance of safety pilots.
The system is designed to operate various hybrid UAVs that are VTOL capable, but can convert to fixed wing mode in order to fly fast and efficient. The system is intended to be compatible with any MAVLink compatible UAS. This allows use of a heterogeneous drone fleet and quick adaptation to the quickly developing UAS market with always using the most advanced models available. The latest recruit in the system is WiCo-178HL of Wingcopter GmbH. Estrato Ltd. has the policy of using only models of European UAS producers to ensure availability of support and spare parts.
Features
- 50 km range
- 6 kg payload
- Control and separation of up to 20 UAV
- Logged closure and opening of packages;
- Predefined safe route sections;
- In-flight route modification;
- Full-autonomous mission planing and mission control.
Estrato is actively working on organising test flights in the frames of the Special and Certified categories of UAS operations according to the new current legislation for UAV operations. Estrato Ltd. is a founding member of the Hungarian Drone Coalition initiated by the Hungarian Ministry of Innovation and Technology.
