{"id":3987,"date":"2019-05-29T12:24:31","date_gmt":"2019-05-29T15:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nachodelatorre.com.ar\/mosconi\/?p=3987"},"modified":"2019-05-29T12:24:31","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T15:24:31","slug":"delivery-de-insumos-sanitarios-con-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/?p=3987","title":{"rendered":"Delivery de insumos sanitarios con drones"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/u><\/b>ZIPLINE es una compa\u00f1\u00eda con sede en California, que opera \u201cDRONES\u201d para entregar\u00a0suministros m\u00e9dicos en \u00e1reas con pobre infraestructura como\u00a0 RUANDA.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Este pa\u00eds es\u00a0conocido como la tierra de las mil colinas, por lo que un viaje de 50 km puede llevar m\u00e1s de una hora.<\/span> Un dron que lleva sangre, realizar\u00e1 el mismo viaje en minutos.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Rwanda is known<\/strong>\u00a0as the land of a thousand hills, and our car seems to go over every one of them as we drive from the small town of Muhanga to the even smaller town of Kinazi. The 50-kilometer trip into western Rwanda will take us well over an hour. We\u2019re on our way to rendezvous with a blood-carrying drone that will make the trip in under 14\u00a0minutes.<\/p>\n

The drone is operated by\u00a0Zipline, a California-based company focused on delivering medical supplies in areas with poor infrastructure. And not long after we arrive at Kinazi\u2019s hospital, the fixed-wing drone materializes out of the blue. In a blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it moment, the drone descends, opens a set of\u00a0doors in its belly, and drops a small package that parachutes to the ground. The\u00a0drone immediately begins to climb and vanishes over the hills as a staff member crosses the hospital parking lot to pick up the package\u2014a shipment of blood ordered by\u00a0WhatsApp\u00a0less than half an hour earlier.<\/p>\n

We then climb back into our car to start our bone-jarring return drive to Muhanga, one of Zipline\u2019s launch sites, winding our way over dirt roads. By the time we make it back, the drone is flying smoothly toward another hospital elsewhere in Rwanda, with a fresh package of blood in its belly.<\/p>\n

Delivery by drone is a futuristic idea that has caught the public\u2019s imagination, and there are plenty of attempts to turn it into a commercial reality.\u00a0Amazon,\u00a0Google, and\u00a0Domino\u2019s Pizza\u00a0have all pulled off carefully controlled demonstrations and pilot projects, delivering items such as\u00a0sunscreen,\u00a0burritos, and (of course)\u00a0pizza\u00a0to backyards and fields. But the world is waiting to see whether any company can find a business model that makes drone delivery a sustainable and profitable endeavor.<\/p>\n

The answer may be here in Rwanda, where Zipline is delivering blood to 25 hospitals and clinics across the country every day. Zipline is betting that transporting lifesaving medical supplies, which are often lightweight and urgently needed, will be the killer app for delivery drones.<\/p>\n

We visited Zipline\u2019s Rwanda operations to understand the technical challenges of building a drone-based delivery service. We found obsessively engineered drones that the company has optimized for blood delivery, along with a detailed plan for integrating them into the country\u2019s medical system. Zipline\u2019s methods could be a model for Africa, as the company\u2019s founders expand their drone services into other countries on the continent this year. But despite the company\u2019s technological and logistical successes thus far, Zipline still has to prove that it can scale up its operations\u2014that it can go big enough to match its soaring ambitions.<\/p>\n

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When an order for blood comes in, it takes only 10 minutes for Zipline\u2019s staff to prepare the package and launch a drone.\u00a0Photo:\u00a0Evan\u00a0Ackerman<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Rwanda has modernized<\/strong>\u00a0rapidly since the 1990s, when the country began its recovery from civil war and genocide. The change has been remarkable: Since 2000, the percentage of the population living below the poverty line has dropped from 59 to 39 percent, and life expectancy has increased\u00a0by nearly 20 years.\u00a0The government\u2019s Vision 2020 national development plan\u00a0emphasizes technology infrastructure, and fiber-optic cables now run alongside main roads. More than 95 percent of the population is covered by\u00a04G cellular networks.<\/p>\n

The government has also invested heavily in health care. But its push to construct hospitals and clinics has resulted in some shiny new medical facilities opening their doors to patients before the roads leading to them have been improved. Traffic is slow on the two-lane highways that twist around the hills, while the roads that branch off toward small towns soon turn into dirt.<\/p>\n

For hospitals in need of critical medical supplies, Rwanda\u2019s roads pose a real problem. Hospital administrators worry most about blood and blood products, which have a short shelf life and strict storage requirements. It\u2019s also difficult to predict how many packs of each blood type will be needed at a given facility, and when. In an emergency, it can take up to 5 hours for a Rwandan hospital to receive a blood delivery via road, which could easily mean death for a patient in need.<\/p>\n

Three entrepreneurs\u2014William Hetzler,\u00a0Keller Rinaudo, and\u00a0Keenan Wyrobeck\u2014founded Zipline in 2014 with the goal of solving such problems through on-demand deliveries by drone. Rwanda was the ideal test bed, with its challenging terrain, relatively small size (about the same area as the U.S. state of Maryland), extensive wireless connectivity, and receptive government.<\/p>\n

Outside observers are cautiously optimistic about the company\u2019s efforts so far. \u201cI\u00a0like Zipline\u2019s approach in Rwanda\u2014they\u2019re operating commercially, which is more than most drone delivery companies [are doing],\u201d says\u00a0Adam Klaptocz, cofounder and CEO of\u00a0Rigitech, a Swiss startup that\u2019s using small cargo drones to connect rural communities in the developing world. \u201cThey\u2019re not trying to be the solution for all drone deliveries,\u201d says Klaptocz. \u201cBut they\u2019re doing this, and it seems like they\u2019re doing it better than the existing way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Technicians stow the blood in the drone\u2019s cargo bay.\u00a0Photo: Evan Ackerman<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Zipline has two<\/strong>\u00a0fulfillment centers in Rwanda, which it refers to as \u201cnests.\u201d The Muhanga nest, which we visited, is about 50 km from the capital of Kigali, and a 2-hour drive, thanks to lumbering trucks that clog the main roads. Its small cluster of buildings abuts a maize field, and the locals who work the field grudgingly move out of the way whenever a drone passes low overhead.<\/p>\n

Several times a week, blood and blood products arrive here by truck. When one shipment arrives during our visit,\u00a0Israel Bimpe, Zipline\u2019s head of national implementation, turns to us with a smile, saying: \u201cThe blood is here!\u201d Workers spring into action, transferring the packs of whole blood, plasma, and platelets into refrigerators. When an order comes in from a hospital via phone, website, WhatsApp, or SMS, a worker wraps the needed packs in padding and stuffs the bundle into a bright red box, which has a wax-paper parachute attached.<\/p>\n

A technician places the box and parachute in the belly of a drone behind a spring-loaded hatch, then snaps a modular battery pack into the drone\u2019s nose. Two people carry the drone to a 13-meter-long electric catapult powered by a bank of supercapacitors, then run through a preflight checklist with the aid of a smartphone app. Zipline confirms the drone\u2019s flight plan with the\u00a0Rwanda Civil Aviation Authority\u00a0and requests flight clearance, while the company\u2019s technicians do their best to convince enthusiastic local kids to move a safe distance away from the launch. Finally, with a satisfying\u00a0zzzing<\/em>, the catapult flings the drone skyward,\u00a0accelerating it to 100 kilometers per hour\u00a0in half a second. It swiftly rises over the Rwandan countryside to a cruising altitude of 120 \u00a0meters. It\u2019s a dramatic moment\u2014and\u00a0at Muhanga it happens 20 to 30 times a day.<\/p>\n

As soon as a drone\u2014which the company calls a Zip\u2014leaves the catapult, it\u2019s fully autonomous. While both Zipline and the Rwanda Civil Aviation Authority track the aircraft and can redirect it at any time, in practice the Zips are mostly forgotten about until they return home, mission complete. In the air, each Zip follows a predetermined flight plan, relaying data on its position and status through Rwanda\u2019s wireless network.<\/p>\n

Our visit to the Kinazi hospital, one of the closer delivery sites, shows us the other end of a Zip\u2019s journey. About 5 minutes before the drone arrives, hospital staff members get an automatic text alert telling them to send someone outside to await the delivery. At Kinazi, that means waiting at the edge of a small grassy field adjacent to the hospital\u2019s parking lot. During our visit, the staff member arrives only after the drone has dropped its package, which just goes to show that blood delivery by drone isn\u2019t the least bit exciting in Rwanda anymore.<\/p>\n

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The Zipline drone travels along a predetermined flight path to its destination.\u00a0Photo:\u00a0Evan\u00a0Ackerman<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Zips can carry relatively large payloads long distances because they\u2019re fixed-wing aircraft, which are significantly more aerodynamically efficient than rotorcraft (such as today\u2019s common quadcopters). Launching a fixed-wing drone from a catapult is easy, but landing it safely\u2014without landing gear or a lengthy runway\u2014is a challenge. Zipline\u2019s solution is a recovery system that the team affectionately refers to as Tall Bob. Its two 10-meter-high towers each have a vertically mounted rotating arm, and a cable is strung between the arms. As a returning Zip flies between these two towers, the arms rotate upward, in a fraction of a second, to snag the cable on a tiny metal hook below the Zip\u2019s tail. The drone is pulled to a stop within a few meters, then the arms allow the drone to swing down and back between the towers. In principle, it\u2019s similar to the way planes land on aircraft carriers.<\/p>\n

To reset the system, workers simply lift the Zip off the wire at ground level, and then rotate the arms back up to prepare for the next capture. The Zipline team has grown accustomed to the remarkable precision of its drone-capturing system, but during our visit we never get tired of seeing the wire pluck Zips out of the sky.<\/p>\n

While Zips can\u2019t launch when crosswinds are too intense, they can handle both high winds and rain once they\u2019re airborne, so weather-related delays at the launch site tend to be brief. But the system isn\u2019t flawless: Zips will turn around if strong head winds drain too much of their battery power, and despite dual motors and redundant ailerons for flight control, mechanical failures do sometimes happen. If the Zip can\u2019t make it back to the nest, it can autonomously deploy a parachute to bring itself gently to the ground. Zipline estimates that the emergency parachute deploys in around\u00a0one in a thousand flights.<\/p>\n

With dozens of orders<\/strong>\u00a0coming in every day, Zipline needs to be sure that it always has drones ready to fly. So its engineers designed the Zips to be as modular as possible, allowing technicians to easily detach different pieces for repairs. While such repairs are common, particularly on the strain-bearing wings, there are always more than enough components to snap together into a fully assembled drone. A bank of chargers ensures that a charged battery pack is always ready to be slotted into a drone being prepped for launch.<\/p>\n

The Zipline facility in Muhanga takes, on average, 10 minutes to launch an order. But Zipline\u2019s engineers think that\u2019s 9 minutes too long. Bimpe says that incremental changes to the process will eventually enable them to fulfill an order in less than 60 seconds. \u201cWe just need to improve it a bit more,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s tweaking operational procedures and improving software to reduce that time to 1 minute. We receive an order and as soon as we finish packing, we just put it on the Zip and it\u2019s ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expected improvements in the Zips themselves will boost range: Today, the farthest hospital that Zipline delivers to is Butaro District Hospital, about 80\u00a0km away (45 minutes as the Zip flies). Because weight determines how long and how far a drone can fly, Zipline\u2019s engineers are always looking for ways to lighten the load. Much of the focus is on the battery, which is the heaviest component of the aircraft. \u201cWe fight super, super hard to shave off grams,\u201d says\u00a0Michael Newhouse, Zipline\u2019s battery lead. The Zipline team uses the smallest-gauge wires they can get away with and special wire strippers to remove excess insulation, thus saving fractions of grams.<\/p>\n