Field Testing Medical Cargo Drones in the DR

My team and I at WeRobotics recently teamed up with Emprende and other partners in the Dominican Republic (DR) to field test the delivery of cargo by drone. A more detailed and technical report is being prepared; similar to the one we published on our cargo drone field tests in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest. In the meantime, this blog post serves as a short overview of the project, which was kindly supported by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB).

We programmed the DR drones to transport medical supplies between local hospitals and remote villages in the mountains, several hours north of Santo Domingo. In addition to the tests, we provided local students and others with hands-on training on how to operate both multi-rotor drones and hybrid drones for cargo delivery. Building local capacity is central to our work at WeRobotics.

Transporting medicines and patient samples between hospitals (the red markers on the map above) and remote clinics (green & purple markers) in the mountains of the DR can be slow and expensive. While roads to these remote clinics do exist, they are not always paved and those that are paved are sometimes impassable due to the rivers that cross them, even during the dry season. Furthermore, while the road network in the mountains of the DR is impressively widespread, the local ownership of motorized vehicles is certainly not, nor is the availability of public transportation.

Villagers in these remote regions earn very little income and do not have the time to spend an entire day traveling to and from the nearest hospital to get their blood tested even though said hospital may “only” be 20 or 30 kilometers away. The reason this takes a day is because there is often only one “bus” (usually a truck) that goes to and from town once a day, leaving early in the morning and returning mid-afternoon. And the “bus” is obviously not free. Some patients are in pain, and simply unable to just “hop” on the back of a truck driving over bumpy roads for an hour or more under the sun. As such, doctors working at these hospitals and clinics are keen to explore other ways to expedite the collection and testing of patient samples and distribution of essential medicines.

In some cases, remote villages will have a small clinic. But these small clinics often lack a continuous supply of medicines. This is particularly problematic for patients who need to take specific medicines on a regular basis. What’s more, sending patient samples that require a specialized laboratory for testing purposes and then receiving results of this testing is also a cumbersome task that becomes complicated. These logistical challenges can potentially be alleviated by introducing the use of cargo drones.

Emprende invited WeRobotics to build local capacity and evaluate the use of drones for the collection and delivery of patient samples and medicines, and to field test two drones in the process. This local training and cargo flights took place over a 10-day period in two different mountainous regions of the DR. The training and flight operations were carried out in partnership with Emprende and other stakeholders. The purpose of these tests was to better understand the opportunities and limitations of using affordable solutions for the rapid delivery of essential supplies in the DR. As such, the field tests sought to better understand the failure points and failure rates of the technology while developing streamlined workflows to enable the safe and regular delivery of essential items in the DR. Understanding failure points and rates is essential to developing a preventive maintenance strategy. The latter serves to increase the reliability and longevity of aircraft. In addition, understanding the limitations of affordable solutions in relevant social, geographical and environmental contexts was one of the overarching goals of the field tests.

The field tests were carried out using 2 types of general-use drones that were adapted for cargo delivery: DJI’s M600 hexacopter drone and Vertical Technologies’ DeltaQuad, a new VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) fixed wing drone, also called a QuadPlane configuration. A total of 31 complete flights were logged (not counting shorter test flights). The types of cargo transported included items of up to 2kg including water, sample tubes, some medicines and even avocados and energy bars for testing purposes. The distances covered by the cargo drones ranged between 5 kilometers and 12 kilometers, with an altitude difference of up to 250 meters in altitude between takeoff and landing. Three technical failures were experienced and exhaustively investigated. These are detailed in the upcoming technical report.

The growing healthcare needs in the DR coupled with expensive and slow cargo delivery options makes it clear that alternative solutions are needed. Our recent trainings and field tests in the DR confirm that cargo drones can be part of the solution. That said, more field research needs to be carried out to identify the most compelling and sustainable delivery routes in the DR. This research is currently being conducted by Emprende in partnership with local universities.