Sweden’s Everdrone pilots’ first cross-border AED drone delivery
When it comes to UAV flights, this one is highly qualified as beyond visual line of sight. Last month, the Swedish specialized drone service company Everdrone successfully controlled the delivery of an automatic external defibrillator (AED) from a distance of 800 kilometers away – and a completely different country.
The 1.6 km drone delivery of an AED flew a five-minute route in Helsinki, Finland, but was checked by Everdrone technicians in Gothenburg, Sweden. The mission was the first UAV delivery of an AED piloted from another country, and one of the few de facto cross-border drone operations in the European Union. Several consecutive variants of AED deliveries to other destinations around Helsinki were orchestrated from Gothenburg’s command center – but by then everyone involved had been there, done so and drank the champagne. Still, it’s a big deal.
Everdrone, which focuses on serving first responders and public safety customers, has made drone delivery of AEDs a priority. It already operates a total of seven UAVs dedicated to that function in four Swedish cities, with a fifth city to be added shortly. The craft flies these emergency missions several times each week.
The company’s tests in Helsinki were an extension of the work in a country that can use the aid a lot. Between 5,000 and 10,000 people die of cardiac arrest outside hospitals in Finland each year. Research has shown that the chance of survival for people suffering from myocardial infarction in remote locations decreases by 10% every minute after arrest. Studies in Sweden have shown that the use of drones to deliver AEDs in these situations is generally faster – sometimes much faster – than traditional ground alternatives.
The cross-border tests were carried out in collaboration with Forum Virium Helsinki, which strives to accelerate innovation and development of the Finnish capital as a smart digital and sustainable city.
According to Daniel Blecher, Everdrone’s ground operations manager, communication and navigation technology is now so solid and familiar that the only tricky part of the tests was navigating the European Union’s administrative process to obtain a permit for cross-border BVLOS flights.
Once it was in hand, and the drones were ready to fly, LTE mobile connections eliminated latency between the pilot and delivery drones. These UAVs meanwhile flew independently predetermined routes. The human monitor was needed to visually check that the fall target was clear and to manually order the lowering of the AED. The only other thing the Gothenburg team needed to do was to keep Helsinki’s air traffic controllers and local partners informed of UAV’s progress.
“With an on-site security operator overseeing operations in Helsinki, a number of missions were carried out during (trials) in which an autonomous drone flew to the scene of a simulated emergency and lowered an AED to the ground using a winch system, before flying back to the launch site.” “The missions were carried out over a simulation of a residential area to demonstrate the drone’s intelligent route planning and autonomous flight capability.”
With the unmatched cross-border delivery challenge for AED drones in their luggage, Everdrone says they now want to equip the UAVs used with position lights and LED beams forward to enable night flying.
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