A UK government backed drone innovation project that’s exploring how unmanned aerial vehicles could benefit cities — including for use-cases such as medical delivery, traffic incident response, fire response and construction and regeneration — has reported early learnings from the first phase of the project.
Five city regions are being used as drone test-beds as part of Nesta’s Flying High Challenge[1] — namely London, the West Midlands, Southampton, Preston and Bradford.
While five socially beneficial use-cases for drone technology have been analyzed as part of the project so far, including considering technical, social and economic implications of the tech.
The project has been ongoing since December.
Nesta, the innovation-focused charity behind the project and the report, wants the UK to become a global leader in shaping drone systems that place people’s needs first, and writes in the report that: “Cities must shape the future of drones: Drones must not shape the future of cities.”
In the report it outlines some of the challenges facing urban implementations of drone technology and also makes some policy recommendations.
It also says that socially beneficial use-cases have come out as an early winner over of cities to the potential of the tech — over and above “commercial or speculative” applications such as drone delivery or for carrying people in flying taxis.
The five use-cases explored thus far via the project are:...
- Medical delivery within London — a drone delivery network for carrying urgent medical products between NHS facilities, which would routinely carry products such as pathology samples, blood products and equipment over relatively short distances between hospitals in a network
- Traffic incident response in the West Midlands — responding to traffic incidents in the West Midlands to support