Drone Visual Line of Sight Restriction Delays Medical Delivery

Drone Visual Line of Sight Restriction Delays Medical Delivery

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San Francisco based robotics startup Zipline will test drone delivery of medical supplies to remote U.S. regions. The Deliveries will include lifesaving blood, medicine, and medical products to places such as Smith Island, Maryland and Pyramid Lake Tribal Health Clinic in Nevada.

Zipline advisor Lawrence Williams: “We put forward a proposal [to the Office of Science and Technology Policy] …and they selected us as a participant to highlight certain capabilities”. Zipline will partner with Google, Ellumen, ASD Healthcare and non-profit Bloodworks Northwest. According to Techcrunch.com, the company’s primary market is not the U.S. It’s Africa. The company has worked to pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) use for health logistics services in the continent i.e, a partnership with UPS for UAV vaccine delivery in Rwanda among other projects.
Zipline’s timeline for testing the White House supported U.S. program depends on the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) approval after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finalized updated operational rules for U.S. commercial drone use rules in June.
The “Part 107” provisions loosened some restrictions but did not open the skies to the package delivery services for which e-commerce actors such as Amazon have lobbied.
Lisa Ellman, Co-Executive Director of the Commercial Drone Alliance: “Overall the new rules provide more commercial drone flexibility, especially around aerial data collection, but only allow for package delivery in a very limited fashion”. The biggest constraint, according to Ellman, is a visual line-of-sight restriction that limits UAV delivery to as far as the operator can see the drone.
“Luckily the FAA rules do allow for a waiver process that will open the door to some more advanced operations, such as flights directly over people, night time flights, and allowing one pilot to operate multiple drones,” said Ellman. “But the waiver process still won’t allow for flights beyond visual line-of-sight for commercial delivery…”

DOT indicated a waiver so that some package delivery could be possible with regard to FAA rules and Zipline’s pending U.S. medical delivery program.
That doesn’t tell much about exactly when Zipline UAVs loaded with medical supplies could start long distance flights in the U.S., but there is a path to approval.

Whenever Zipline does begin testing the White House supported program, it might very likely influence the drone sector which according to estimations will generate roughly 82 billion dollars.
Terah Lyons, a White House advisor in the Office of Science and Technology Policy: “There are deeper implications here for a burgeoning industry at hand. Doing these tests is a means to facilitate smarter decision making from a regulatory perspective…They are all feeding data back into the FAA’s decision making process related to drone delivery”.