RigiTech, in collaboration with Leonardo one of the European Main Players in the airspace market and Telespazio a Leonardo and Thales owned company, have made history in Italy this week by performing long-range drone-based deliveries of healthcare material between two hospitals near Rome’s Fiumicino Airport.
This week RigiTech has reached a new milestone on the way to opening the skies for healthcare deliveries in Europe – the first long-range Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight (BVLOS) deliveries of biological samples in Italy. The RigiOne, our first generation drone with vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) has made this possible several consecutive times in a safe, fast and reliable manner.
On October 19 and 20, 2020, RigiOne and RigiTech’s operations processes were put to test by connecting two sites of Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital near Rome. The deliveries were made between Santa Marinella Hospital and Palidoro Pediatric Hospital through a 32 km aerial route. Road transportation between the two sites takes from 45 minutes to one hour depending on the traffic, and the RigiOne drone was able to make this connection on-demand in just 25 minutes.
The operation was fully automatic and supervised through redundant
communications linked through our RigiCloud software which enabled reliable and constant monitoring and control of the operation during, take-off, landing and BVLOS parts of the delivery. Flight data was synchronised with Telespazio’s T-Dromes UTM to allow the flight, providing coordination with other airspace actors. Safety was assured through RigiTech’s onboard algorithms, advanced geofencing and failsafe systems, which were critical to gain support from Italy’s Civil Aviation Authority (ENAC) – the first BVLOS operation of it’s kind.
RigiTech is proud of this achievement and the fact that this operation will enable drone delivery to be a reality in Italy in the upcoming years. We would like to thank Leonardo, Telespazio, Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital and ENAC for trusting us with this operation. This is just the beginning of what the future holds and the benefit that drone logistics can do for the healthcare sector.
This is just the beginning of what the future holds and the benefit that drone logistics can do for the healthcare sector.
Here you can find other press releases on the subject and a video created by Leonardo:
