K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Throughout AUVSI XPONENTIAL people asked what the major and/or exciting innovations were this year. And my answer was always the same: integration. It isn’t flashy but integration is an integral aspect toward maturity. Integration can mean many things. From a business perspective, it is the combining of essential components to offer end users a more complete solution—there have been many exciting examples of this recently. For administrator Steve Dickson, it means safely adding drones to the national airspace. Another definition, and perhaps the most exciting, is the integration of drone technology into our daily lives.
For many people in the world, the idea of drones being an integral part of their communities may seem like a novelty. But for the communities serviced by Zipline it is a reality. In his XPONENTIAL keynote, Keller Rinaudo, CEO of Zipline, quantified and qualified the impact of integration for these communities.
Rinaudo began his presentation with a time lapsed video and flight record of a day of deliveries at a distribution center in Ghana. Multiple flights took off and returned simultaneously, and by 12:25 PM, 58 deliveries had already been made carrying over 400 medical products. By the end of the 12-hour day, it had nearly doubled. He then shared several maps of the countries Zipline is servicing, demonstrating that their network was already available across much of these countries.
All of this underlined that Zipline is already performing drone delivery at scale and has been doing so for about nine years. From a logistics point of view this is impressive—Commercial UAV News often talks about how this will look like in the U.S. and Europe. But what Zipline has been able to demonstrate goes beyond logistics or business cases and speaks to how drones can improve lives in meaningful ways.
“We have totally changed the paradigm of health care,” stated Rinaudo. “Today, the ministry of health can train more doctors, nurses, and hospitals who didn’t have access to critical medical supplies to provide services that were only available in a few places. Patients can go to their local clinic rather than travel hours to get treatment. We’ve made over 20,000 life-saving emergency deliveries over the last couple of years. But beyond expanding access to healthcare, we’ve been able to help healthcare supply chains.”
Continue reading: https://www.commercialuavnews.com/drone-delivery/integrating-drones-into-our-daily-lives-for-rural-communities
For many people in the world, the idea of drones being an integral part of their communities may seem like a novelty. But for the communities serviced by Zipline it is a reality. In his XPONENTIAL keynote, Keller Rinaudo, CEO of Zipline, quantified and qualified the impact of integration for these communities.
Rinaudo began his presentation with a time lapsed video and flight record of a day of deliveries at a distribution center in Ghana. Multiple flights took off and returned simultaneously, and by 12:25 PM, 58 deliveries had already been made carrying over 400 medical products. By the end of the 12-hour day, it had nearly doubled. He then shared several maps of the countries Zipline is servicing, demonstrating that their network was already available across much of these countries.
All of this underlined that Zipline is already performing drone delivery at scale and has been doing so for about nine years. From a logistics point of view this is impressive—Commercial UAV News often talks about how this will look like in the U.S. and Europe. But what Zipline has been able to demonstrate goes beyond logistics or business cases and speaks to how drones can improve lives in meaningful ways.
“We have totally changed the paradigm of health care,” stated Rinaudo. “Today, the ministry of health can train more doctors, nurses, and hospitals who didn’t have access to critical medical supplies to provide services that were only available in a few places. Patients can go to their local clinic rather than travel hours to get treatment. We’ve made over 20,000 life-saving emergency deliveries over the last couple of years. But beyond expanding access to healthcare, we’ve been able to help healthcare supply chains.”
Continue reading: https://www.commercialuavnews.com/drone-delivery/integrating-drones-into-our-daily-lives-for-rural-communities
