Zipline on Monday announced plans to significantly expand a medical drone delivery initiative within the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) in collaboration with Apian—which, interestingly, partnered with Wing in August. The program will roll out in fall 2024.

“Today, 3,000-pound gas vehicles driven by humans are used to deliver 3-pound packages billions of times per year,” said Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, CEO and co-founder of Zipline. “It’s expensive, slow, and bad for the environment. This decision means that the NHS can start to transition delivery to solutions that are 10 times as fast, less expensive, and zero emission. This service will be delivered at a fraction of the cost of the existing solution and will help drive financial savings to the NHS in the longer term.”

Meanwhile, Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, announced last week that the FAA approved it for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations without visual observers (VOs), or humans who are stationed below the flight path to keep an eye on the drones. Coincidentally, the approval is a summary grant based on BVLOS exemptions the regulator awarded in September to four firms—including, you guessed it, Zipline.

Zipline Expands to the UK

As of mid-December, Zipline drones have made more than 850,000 deliveries. The company says it completes a trip every 70 seconds. Zipline got its start operating in sub-Saharan Africa before expanding to the U.S. and Japan, picking up customers such as Walmart, Pfizer, and Cleveland Clinic. But it hasn’t yet reached the U.K.

The firm hopes to change that by working with the NHS, Europe’s largest employer, and Apian, a healthcare logistics provider co-founded by a team of former NHS doctors. Apian’s flagship product is an automated, on-demand delivery system that will allow Zipline to easily fulfill orders placed by the NHS.

The new service will provide on-demand drone delivery of prescriptions, wound care, and other medical products to more than 30 hospitals, general practitioners, and care homes across the region.

“I’ve seen firsthand the impact that running out of supplies can have on patient health outcomes,” said Dr. Christopher Law, medical director and co-founder of Apian. “Healthcare should benefit from on-demand delivery, much like consumers now do in their personal lives. Delivering critical products with drones, where and when they’re most needed, will improve supply chain efficiency and give doctors, nurses, and clinicians more time to focus on the most important thing—their patients.”

Zipline will build a hub for the service near the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Northumberland, England. From there, its autonomous, fixed-wing drones—or Zips, as the company refers to them—will travel up to 130 sm (113 nm) round trip in most weather conditions, floating packages gently to the ground using parachutes.

The Zips use technologies, such as artificial intelligence and an acoustic detect and avoid (DAA) system, to navigate around tall buildings or other aircraft. Each is equipped with redundant safety systems and supervised by trained personnel, who can track flights and intervene when needed.

Zipline intends to centralize inventory of the NHS’ most frequently ordered products: prescription medicines, wound care products, and joint replacement implants, to name a few. These will be flown to Hexham General Hospital, Wansbeck General Hospital, Haltwhistle War Memorial Hospital, and other regional health facilities, within minutes of receiving an order.

Eventually, the partners expect to deliver to “significantly more” health facilities. According to Zipline, the service should help providers move away from last-minute logistics to reduce the number of canceled procedures, which could reduce wait times. It’s expected to launch next year with Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

“This expansion with Zipline and Apian is an exciting next step as we strive to improve services for the hundreds of thousands of patients we serve,” said James Mackey, CEO of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. “We believe this innovative technology could be used to improve healthcare outcomes, save money, and eliminate supply chain complexities, and we’re keen to get started.”

Wing—which primarily delivers items such as food, wellness products, and household essentials—is working with Apian to add its own drones to U.K. medical logistics networks. The two plan to deliver pharmacy items, lab samples, and medical devices and supplies in South Dublin, Ireland, as early as this year.

However, the Alphabet subsidiary remains heavily focused on the U.S. market.

Wing Sheds Operational Restrictions

As Zipline adds a previously announced Wing partner, Wing is leveraging a previously announced Zipline approval to bolster its own operations.

The company on Friday said the FAA approved its DAA tech for BVLOS operations without VOs, allowing its drones to use ADS-B instead. The new permissions extend to the airspace above Dallas, where Wing serves customers within a 6-mile radius out of a Walmart Supercenter in the suburb of Frisco.

The firm said the exemption will allow it to remove VOs across Dallas and similar airspace around other major U.S. cities. Following Zipline’s landmark flight last month, Wing will be one of the first drone delivery providers to fly unencumbered by VOs.

“Overall, the FAA’s approval for DAA and recognition of broader strategic deconfliction and [uncrewed traffic management] applications will allow us to operate more efficiently and work toward scaled operations nationwide,” Wing wrote in a blog post. “Starting with communities across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, this action supports our path toward expanding our service across the U.S.”

Wing’s approval is a summary grant, which is essentially a streamlined authorization for a “copycat” company with similar infrastructure, aircraft, and technology to those who have already been approved. In lieu of a final rule on BVLOS operations, the FAA expects to use summary grants to enable early services without overbearing restrictions. Amazon Prime Air, for example, is another recipient.

It’s unclear which of the initial approvals Wing piggybacked off of to obtain its new permissions. But of the four firms to receive exemptions, Zipline’s is the most similar—it too was permitted to replace VOs with its DAA system in a few key markets.

“Our holistic approach to BVLOS flight has been used for commercial deliveries on three continents for several years,” Wing said in its blog post. “It is grounded in avoiding potential conflict before flights ever take off and utilizes in-flight DAA to add an additional layer of safety. Wing has demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of this approach with operational flight data, extensive simulation, and flight test.”

While not as flashy as an international expansion, the removal of VOs could be a big deal for Wing. Without the need to station humans on the ground, the company could greatly expand its delivery range while lowering operational costs. It’s one of the few paths to scale available to industry players, who are just beginning to turn visions of drone-filled skies into reality.

The updates from Wing and Zipline may also have implications for smaller industry players and startups. Having each made several hundred thousand deliveries, the two firms already have a leg up on the competition. Now, the rich are getting richer—and lesser known rivals may need to do even more to catch up.

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Cleveland Clinic, considered one of the top hospital systems in the world based on rankings by outlets such as U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek, is partnering with drone delivery provider Zipline to fly certain medications directly to patients’ porches, patio tables, or front steps starting in 2025.

Deliveries will be made using Zipline’s Platform 2 (P2) delivery system, which is designed to complete 10 sm (8.7 nm) trips to dense, urban areas in about 10 minutes.

The largest drone delivery provider on Earth in terms of sheer volume, Zipline has completed more than 800,000 deliveries of some 8.3 million items to date, per the company’s website. The bulk of these are on-demand healthcare deliveries of cargo such as blood, vaccines, and prescription medications.

Already, Zipline is partnered with several U.S. retailers and healthcare providers, including Walmart, Cardinal Health, and MultiCare Health System. It added agreements with Michigan Medicine, Intermountain Healthcare, and OhioHealth earlier this year. The company currently flies in Arkansas, Utah, and North Carolina, with plans to expand into other states in the months ahead.

Earlier this month, competitor Amazon Prime Air added prescription drone delivery to its service in College Station, Texas, as more firms begin exploring the use case.

“This technology will help us achieve our goal to expand our pharmacy home delivery program and provide easier, quicker access to prescribed medications in our communities,” said Geoff Gates, senior director of supply chain management at Cleveland Clinic.

Starting next year, Cleveland Clinic will coordinate with local government officials to check its compliance with safety and technical requirements for launching the drone delivery service. It will also begin to install Zipline docks and loading portals at locations in northeast Ohio, mostly facilities at its main campus in Cleveland and in nearby Beechwood.

Initially, the service will deliver specialty medications and other prescriptions—which typically would be shipped via ground delivery—from more than a dozen Cleveland Clinic locations. Eventually, it’s expected to offer emergency or “rush” prescriptions, lab samples, prescription meals, medical and surgical supplies, and items for “hospital-at-home” services.

Cleveland Clinic has been lauded for its supply chain (for which it earned the top spot on Gartner’s 2021 ranking) and innovative use of technology, in particular. That makes it somewhat unsurprising that the hospital system would add an emerging technology like drone delivery, which is already changing the healthcare landscape in regions such as Africa. Zipline’s drones, for example, have delivered blood, vaccines, and other medical supplies in Rwanda since 2016.

“We are always looking for solutions that are cost effective, reliable and reduce the burden of getting medications to our patients,” said Bill Peacock, chief of operations at Cleveland Clinic. “Not only are deliveries via drone more accurate and efficient, the technology we are utilizing is environmentally friendly. The drones are small, electric, and use very little energy for deliveries.”

Zipline’s P2 drones, or Zips, include a detachable delivery “droid.” The droid docks on loading portals that can be installed directly on buildings, sliding back and forth between the building’s interior and exterior through a small opening—like a fast-food restaurant employee handing off meals through a drive-thru window.

When a prescription is ready to be delivered, a Cleveland Clinic technician will load the droid, which can carry up to 8 pounds of cargo. The small capsule then slides out of the window, undocks from the loading portal, and docks with the Zip, all on its own.

The drones will cruise at around 70 mph (61 knots) at an altitude near 300 feet, and customers will be able to track their orders in real time. Once it arrives at the delivery address, the Zip will deploy the droid, which uses a mix of onboard perception technology and electric fans to quietly and precisely steer itself to a dropoff point as small as a patio table. The Zip will then fly back to a Cleveland Clinic site and dock itself.

“Zipline has been focused on improving access to healthcare for eight years,” said Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, co-founder and CEO of Zipline. “We’re thrilled to soon bring fast, sustainable, and convenient delivery to Cleveland Clinic patients.”

Zipline announced P2 in March, but the system is not yet in action. However, the company expects the new hardware and software will enable quicker, quieter deliveries. 

In addition to the upgraded Zips, easier integrations with retailers, and other technology upgrades, a big benefit of P2 will be flexibility. The new drones will be able to fly up to 24 miles in a single direction and land on any dock in the network, allowing Zipline to send additional capacity to locations experiencing high volume (or divert it from sites that aren’t).

Already, the firm has several P2 customers lined up, including the government of Rwanda, Michigan Medicine, MultiCare, and American restaurant chain Sweetgreen. It will continue to deploy its Platform 1 (P1) system—which airdrops packages using a parachute—for certain clients.

Zipline is one of five U.S. drone delivery companies—the others being Prime Air, UPS Flight Forward, Alphabet’s Wing, and Causey Aviation Unmanned, a longtime partner of Israel’s Flytrex—to receive Part 135 air carrier certification from the FAA. The firm’s approval authorizes commercial operations spanning up to 26 sm (22.5 nm), including beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the pilot.

In September, Zipline obtained an FAA BVLOS exemption for its services in Utah and Arkansas with P1. The waiver allows the company to remove visual observers from those routes, which it said it will begin doing later this year. Three other firms, including Flight Forward, received similar permissions.

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Petaluma, California-based Jump Aero last week revealed its model for an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) first response aircraft the startup has been developing since 2019. Jump says its JA1 “Pulse” will be able to fly emergency responders and equipment anywhere within a 31 sm (27 nm) radius in less than eight minutes. The goal is to cut response times in half.

Pulse is designed to help medical professionals arrive on the scene of rural emergencies with lifesaving equipment as fast as possible. It has a dash speed of 250 knots and a payload of 330 pounds, enough to carry a pilot plus emergency supplies.

Simultaneously, Jump announced a $1.8 million tactical funding increase (TACFI), adding to the $3.6 million in contract value the company previously won through the U.S. Air Force’s AFWERX division. AFWERX is the innovation arm of the Air Force and will partially fund Jump’s first full-scale, proof-of-concept prototype.

“Jump Aero’s aircraft concept and development strategy focusing on rapid emergency response has potential for defense-related use-cases and is complementary to the other eVTOL programs that the U.S. Air Force’s Agility Prime program has engaged with to date,” said Lieutenant Colonel John Tekell, program lead for AFWERX’s Agility Prime division, which is dedicated to vertical lift technologies. “We look forward to working with Jump Aero to help mature their dual-use technology.”

In addition, Jump revealed that Denmark-based Falck Ambulance Services—which provides some 8 million emergency response and healthcare services every year—purchased an option to order a single Pulse aircraft, becoming the firm’s first customer. It serves clients in 15 countries.

“Falck is excited to partner with Jump Aero to help us revolutionize the future of emergency services,” said Jakob Riis, CEO of Falck. “By enabling professional help to reach hard-to-access locations in a timely manner, Jump Aero will help Falck to deliver improved services to our customers.”

The Specs

According to Carl Dietrich—the cofounder of flying car manufacturer Terrafugia, who launched Jump alongside partner Anna, director of regulatory affairs for XWing and co-founder of the Community Air Mobility Initiative, in 2019—Pulse will not replace helicopters. 

Rather, it will complement them by expanding the locations first responders can land, such as in front of a home on a two-way residential street. eVTOLs are also easier to “switch on” and “switch off” compared to piston- or turbine-engine rotorcraft, which need a bit more time to get flying. Those few minutes can feel like hours in emergency situations.

• READ MORE: Jump Aero to Develop eVTOL for First Responders

Since it can’t carry patients, Pulse won’t be replacing ambulances either. Instead, in cases where extra support is needed, dispatchers might send both an ambulance and a Pulse, the latter of which would theoretically arrive first to begin treatment.

The first responder niche eliminates some barriers to entry faced by eVTOL air taxi firms such as Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, and Boeing-owned Wisk Aero, which are subject to greater FAA scrutiny because they plan to carry passengers. It also allows Jump to avoid butting heads with the industry’s well-funded titans.

“The use of eVTOLs—where someone’s life is at stake—is much more likely to be accepted by society at large than air taxis,” Dietrich told FLYING in 2020. “The chance to develop something that might save someone’s life someday—that is a really compelling story.”

To that point, Pulse can be deployed in less than 60 seconds and travel anywhere within about a 30-mile radius in just minutes. That’s comparable to an ambulance in most situations, but Pulse has the added advantage of being able to avoid traffic on the road.

The aircraft—a tail-sitter biplane that stands nose up on the runway—runs on eight independent batteries powering eight motors, four each on its two sets of fixed wings. In forward flight, it cruises on the wings. At takeoff, the pilot stands upright before transitioning to a prone position—à la Superman—when Pulse tilts forward.

A large belly window provides an unobstructed view of the ground below to enable steep approaches, allowing Pulse to land on 10-degree slopes (which covers most roads and driveways). Simplified flight controls with full envelope protection, a ballistic airframe parachute, and an adaptive flight controller with run-time-assurance architecture bolster its safety. The design also features a high lift-to-drag ratio, a low frontal area, and can continue hovering at about 9,500 feet density altitude with a failed propulsor.

Crucially, Pulse is compact enough to fit in a flatbed trailer without being disassembled, allowing emergency services to transport and deploy it where needed. It also lacks complex systems such as articulating motors and retractable landing gear, making it easy to maintain.

So far, Jump has yet to announce a hard entry-into-service deadline. Some eVTOL manufactures, including Joby and Archer, hope to launch commercial air taxi services as soon as 2025. Others, such as Wisk, are looking further out, eyeing the range of 2028 to 2030. Jump’s first deliveries will likely also take place sometime in the next five years—if all goes according to plan.

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Bristow on Tuesday announced it placed deposits for early deliveries of five Elroy Air Chaparral VTOL cargo drones, part of the company’s letter of intent to preorder 100 Chaparral systems in  July 2022. The move ensures Bristow will receive some of the first commercially certified Elroy aircraft off the production line and will add the first VTOL cargo models to its aircraft portfolio.

Elroy expects the first deliveries of Chaparral will happen in 2025. Bristow, which already operates a global network of helicopter services, plans to deploy the aircraft internationally to support advanced air mobility (AAM) use cases in cargo logistics, healthcare, and energy.

A Bristow spokesperson told FLYING the early stage of Chaparral’s development and certification make it difficult to pinpoint an exact delivery date. But the company sees it becoming an integral part of its global fleet to compliment its services in existing markets.

“There is an increasing demand for the movement of time-sensitive cargo for logistics, healthcare and energy applications,” said Dave Stepanek, executive vice president and chief transformation officer at Bristow. “Securing these early delivery positions underscores our commitment to leading the [AAM] market and builds on our 75-plus year legacy of vertical lift innovations. At Bristow, we’re excited to usher in a new era of vertical lift operations and collaborate with Elroy Air to meet the emerging market of express shipping cargo in cities and regions, without relying on existing or new airport infrastructure.”

Elroy’s Chaparral, unveiled in January 2022, is a hybrid-electric, lift-plus-cruise VTOL drone with a 300 pound payload—far larger than most drones—which makes it ideal for heavy cargo operations. Those could one day include middle-mile commercial logistics, industrial cargo services, humanitarian aid shipments, and aerial lines of support for U.S. Navy ships and military bases.

Chaparral has two core components: the aircraft and its cargo pods. The drone itself cruises at 143 mph (125 knots) and can fly up to 300 sm (260 nm) —about the distance between Houston and the U.S.-Mexico border. A hybrid-electric powertrain powers eight vertical and four forward propellers, relying on both conventional turbines and electric propulsion for flexible fueling. With a 26-foot wingspan and a length of 19 feet, the airframe can be configured to fit inside a 40-foot shipping container or the cargo hold of another aircraft.

Chaparral also comes with two different cargo pods designed to load heavy or light cargo. An autonomous ground navigation system uses advanced perception and robotic technology to guide the aircraft to the pod, which is intended to be preloaded by ground personnel. Cargo loaders can then sit back and watch as the aircraft’s lift-and-latch cargo handling mechanism grabs the pod entirely on its own.

The automated ground navigation and cargo handling systems allow Chaparral to retrieve cargo before takeoff, release it after landing, and taxi to the next pod by itself. That minimizes turnaround time and operator interaction on the ground, creating what Elroy calls a “bidirectional conveyor belt through the sky.”

The company in May demonstrated Chaparral’s autonomous ground capabilities at Travis Air Force Base in California as part of the Air Force’s Golden Phoenix Technology Demonstration Event.

“Getting to this stage of the process—reserved delivery positions secured with deposits—underscores our relationship built with Bristow and we are extremely pleased to be at this stage in development,” said Kofi Asante, vice president of business development and strategy for Elroy. “Bristow’s expertise is a strong catalyst for bringing new aircraft like ours to the market. Their rotorcraft expertise, global footprint, and innovative mindset have made them a strong partner and we are excited for the next chapter together.”

Chaparral adds to Bristow’s other VTOL purchases, of which it has made a heap over the past 24 months. The company has orders for up to 55 Beta Technologies Alia-250s, up to 50 Vertical Aerospace VA-X4s, 100 eVTOL aircraft from Embraer subsidiary Eve Air Mobility, and between 20 and 50 Overair Butterfly aircraft. It also plans to buy 50 Lilium Jets and agreed to provide maintenance for the German company’s Florida network in addition to its future networks in the U.S. and Europe.

As of January, Elroy has sold more than 900 Chaparral systems representing more than $2 billion in purchase demand. According to SMG Consulting’s AAM Reality Index (ARI), that places it behind only Eve, Vertical, and China’s EHang among the major AAM players. It ranks seventh in overall ARI rating, which measures a company’s ability to produce thousands of units of commercial products per year. Rival Beta ranks second, with Vertical, Lilium, and Textron’s Pipistrel—all of whom look to serve the cargo industry—also in the mix.

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Wing, the drone delivery subsidiary of Alphabet that delivers items like beer and peanuts to baseball fans, extra balls and tees to golf courses, and food to hungry customers in bustling cities, on Wednesday announced it will launch its first medical drone delivery service in Ireland this year. The new network will deliver pharmacy items, laboratory samples, and medical devices and supplies between healthcare providers.

“Think of this as a ‘provider-to-provider’ service, or B2B, meaning not directly to the consumer or households,” a Wing spokesperson told FLYING. “We will be delivering to hospitals and other healthcare providers, which is different from our residential deliveries you might have seen elsewhere.”

To integrate into medical logistics networks, Wing will partner with Apian, a U.K.-based company founded by a team of National Health Service doctors. The firm uses APIs to combine medical and aviation systems, connecting healthcare providers with drone operators and services through a single, automated, on-demand delivery system for critical cargo.

The partners will spend the next few months working with local healthcare and pharmacy partners to create a rapid medical delivery network in the Irish county of South Dublin, where more than one-quarter of a million potential customers reside. 

The suburban setting is one most drone delivery companies would avoid. In these densely populated regions, the aircraft need to be able to avoid tall buildings while ensuring the safety and privacy of hundreds of thousands of people on the ground. 

But delivering to congested areas is Wing’s forte, having already launched services in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and several midsized Australian cities. 

Later this year, the company expects to begin working with hospitals and other care providers in Dublin to make drone deliveries in the Irish capital a reality. It told FLYING that customers can anticipate a maximum of 20 deliveries per day at launch.

“Together, Wing and Apian believe that healthcare should benefit from on-demand delivery much like consumers do in their personal lives,” wrote Shannon Nash, chief financial officer of Wing, in a blog post. “Medical drone delivery can provide a faster, more reliable, lower-cost solution than ground-based alternatives. We aim to address speed, inefficiencies, and also environmental challenges by reducing vehicles on the road.”

Wing’s South Dublin drone delivery network won’t be its first activity in Ireland. The announcement follows the company’s October 2022 launch of a small-scale demonstration of an operation in Lusk, a town about 12 miles north of Dublin.

The goal of that demonstration was to gain experience operating in Ireland and learning from the local community which services would add the most value. The company said Wednesday it received important feedback from those trials—and it appears medical deliveries came highly requested.

Wing said it chose to launch in Ireland because of the support it has received from the Irish Aviation Authority. It also pointed to the local community’s embrace of emerging technologies, which has fostered the growth of companies such as Manna Drone Delivery, the country’s preeminent provider. To Wing’s point, Manna founder and CEO Bobby Healy in July hailed the American firm as “the gold standard in our industry.”

“They have a platform that’s way ahead of everyone, a team that has the ability and capital to really go forward, and they’re ready to scale,” he said. “They’ll be held back in the U.S., just because regulations aren’t there yet. But I think you can safely say that it will be Manna and Wing scaling in Europe in the not-too-distant future.”

As Healy alluded, Wing does not plan to stop at Ireland. Servicing all of Europe presents a lofty challenge, but at minimum it plans to turn the U.K. into a key market.

“We also look forward to future opportunities in the U.K. after years of collaboration with regulators and contributions to numerous policy forums,” Nash wrote.

Drone Delivery Dominance

The addition of medical deliveries could add to Wing’s well-established drone delivery dominance. Earlier this year, the company surpassed 300,000 deliveries globally, dwarfing the likes of Amazon Prime Air, UPS Flight Forward, and other key rivals.

Wing currently flies in 10 total locations, with its largest services in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales. There, it makes store-to-door deliveries for grocery store chain Coles Supermarkets and accepts in-app orders through a partnership with DoorDash, among other services. On a good day, the company will make 1,000 deliveries—or about one every 25 seconds—to Australian customers.

In addition, Wing drones are abuzz in the suburbs of Dallas and Christiansburg, Virginia, the firm’s first U.S. market. Helsinki is another major service area.

Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, Wing got its wings primarily by delivering hot meals, convenience and grocery items, and last-mile e-commerce orders. Now, though, the firm says it is fully committed to adding health care services.

“Drone delivery in healthcare has a tremendous opportunity for scale, both in operational service and in benefits delivered to patients and providers,” a spokesperson told FLYING. “We look forward to continued work in healthcare drone delivery in the future.”

That industry is currently dominated by Bay Area-based Zipline, which boasts expansive services in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, as well as in the U.S. in Arkansas, Utah, and North Carolina. In May, the company announced it had completed more than 600,000 deliveries of blood, vaccines, prescriptions, and other medical cargo.

Wing has a long way to go to catch Zipline. But there’s a key difference between the two that could give the former a leg up.

Unlike Zipline and other rivals, Wing has opted to fly mostly in urban settings, which have largely been untouched by drone delivery. Zipline also hopes to operate in cities with the launch of its P2 delivery system. But the Alphabet subsidiary is building its entire business around those densely populated markets.

In March, it revealed its concept for the Wing Delivery Network, considered the model for the company moving forward. The idea is to use the roofs and parking lots of city storefronts as delivery hubs and to fly its drones like last-mile delivery vans, traveling between stores and continuously making deliveries where demand is highest.

The decentralized system runs on a proprietary logistics automation software, which allocates drones to “pads” where they take off, land, and charge. The system also manages Autoloaders, staged modules that allow store associates to “preload” orders drones can pick up automatically. Essentially, it’s an automated version of curbside pickup.

The system is designed with flexibility at the forefront. It can turn just about any location into a delivery hub, and its ability to reposition drones throughout the network allows it to adjust to spikes in demand.

“Wing’s operations require very little infrastructure and can be set up in a range of spaces, making them suitable for a wide variety of healthcare facilities,” Nash wrote in her blog post.

By mid-2024, Wing envisions its Delivery Network handling millions of deliveries for millions of customers. And it expects it to do so at a lower cost than ground transport can achieve for same-day delivery of small packages. 

In a healthcare industry where speed is key, the system’s ability to deliver in as little as three minutes has the potential to save lives. In a few months, we’ll find out exactly what it’s capable of.

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RigiTech is a Swiss drone manufacturer and operator boasting some of the most extensive beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight authorizations in the industry. And it just completed a landmark test of its Eiger delivery system, flying spare parts to the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm, located 20 sm (17 nm) off the coast of Denmark. But there’s a catch—the drones didn’t need to land.

The tests marked the rollout of RigiTech’s prototype precision dropping system, which autonomously releases cargo from a few feet in the air when it detects the drone has reached its destination. That’s a game-changer in the case of offshore wind turbines, which typically do not have landing pads.

RigiTech and partners Holo and DSV made 40 deliveries, each lasting 30 minutes, to the offshore wind farm—with a 100 percent success rate—on behalf of energy company Ørsted. Remarkably, the entire operation was monitored remotely by Holo, an autonomous systems operator based in Copenhagen 83 sm (72 nm) away.

“This project started with a simple customer challenge: How do we get parts directly to a technician inside a wind turbine?” said Adam Klaptocz, CEO of RigiTech. “The solution was nothing but simple and pushed us to develop multiple cutting-edge technologies, including AI-based flight planning algorithms, precision navigation in high-wind environments, computer vision and sensor fusion algorithms. The results speak for themselves—spare parts delivered with centimeter-level precision, fully autonomously, every time.”

The Swiss company and its partners began initial testing with Ørsted in 2022. But these recent tests introduced RigiTech’s precision dropping prototype, billed as an optional add-on to the Eiger platform.

Ørsted warehouse workers loaded Eiger drones with spare parts, but from there, flights were completed entirely BVLOS. Holo technicians and Ørsted workers were able to monitor them through live video streaming, but RigiCloud—RigiTech’s AI-based logistics software—did the heavy lifting. The software determined when the drone was hovering over the 310-foot-tall turbine, initiating the supply drop autonomously.

Interestingly, only a handful of drone delivery firms are attempting to scrub the landing phase of delivery by dropping cargo from the air. The most notable is Amazon, which has struggled to match the trip volume of competitors such as Alphabet’s Wing.

RigiTech’s Eiger drone is incredibly durable, with a range of 62 miles and the ability to fly in winds as fast as 33 mph (28 knots). Configured for daytime as well as nighttime operations, it’s able to deliver between cities and rural or hard-to-reach areas alike. With a payload of 6.6 pounds and a temperature-controlled cargo hold, it’s ideal for medical and humanitarian deliveries of items such as blood or vaccines.

But Eiger’s key differentiator is its ability to be flown autonomously and remotely. That’s thanks to RigiCloud, which enables launches from tens of miles away, provides real-time flight tracking, and creates preprogrammed routes in compliance with regulatory authorities across Europe. It also tracks drone maintenance and operator credentials, which protects customers from butting heads with aviation rulemakers.

Because the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has yet to finalize a standard BVLOS rule, RigiTech was only able to complete wind turbine tests with authorization from Denmark’s civil aviation agency. The company also owns BVLOS approvals in Switzerland, France, Italy, and the Czech Republic.

BVLOS flight is also heavily restricted in the U.S., requiring drone delivery firms to establish bases of operation and deploy visual observers close to where they fly—unless they obtain an FAA waiver. That limits most operations to small areas and makes it more challenging to expand into new markets.

RigiTech, though, has its eye on long-range deliveries in multiple countries. In March, it became the first company to launch routine BVLOS flights in France, delivering blood and biological samples between laboratories in Bourgoin-Jallieu and Tignieu-Jameyzieu, 16 miles apart. Those flights averaged just 15 minutes in duration, half the time it would take to drive.

The company also announced a partnership with U.S.-based drone operator Spright in May to deploy Eiger across its global health care delivery network. In 2020 it completed the first long-range BVLOS deliveries (20 sm or 17 nm) of biological samples in Italy. All of this is despite RigiTech being around for just five years.

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