The Amazon is home to thousands of local indigenous communities spread across very remote areas. As a result, these sparsely populated communities rarely have reliable access to essential medicines and public health services. Local doctors in the region of Contamana report an average of 45 snakebites per month and no rapid access to antivenom, for example. WeRobotics recently traveled to the rainforest to learn more about these challenges, and to explore whether cargo drones (UAVs) could realistically be used to overcome some of these problems in a sustainable manner. We are excited to share the results of our latest field tests in this new report (PDF); Spanish version here. We were able to deliver anti-venom and blood samples to a remote village about 40km away from the nearest town. A regular boat (canoe) takes up to 6 hours to complete the journey. For the video documentaries and high-resolution photos, please follow this link. We're back in Contamana this week carrying out additional field-tests.
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
Wow! That's amazing work, you make great contribution to medicines and public health service.
Many thanks for your kind feedback, everyone! This was just a preliminary field-test, remains to be seen if/how affordable cargo drones can be used long term. Thanks again!
I'd love to see a solar assisted variant that drops the package and returns to home. The night time variant could carry a non-solar wing, more batteries, and nav lights.
Hi Patrick,
I think like you that drones are great and promising ways to transport packages over large distances at lower cost, that is why I have developed an improved skywalker with a cockpit 3d print to Put the battery in, and free up more space inside, if this solution interests you, you can get an idea of my drone by going to www.uav40.com.
Congratulations again for what you do with your team.
It's amazing to see the level of organization and collaboration that went into this demo, great work and good luck on future trials!