Technology alone won't launch 'drones for good' from pilots to progress

SAN FRANCISCO — The first humanitarian drone testing corridor in Africa became operational just over a year ago. The air corridor in Malawi is intended to be a safe space for operators to perform test flights, work out kinks, and make improvements to unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. But while the humanitarian drone testing corridor has brought a number of operators to Malawi, the country has not seen the scale of operations needed for drones to make a meaningful difference in health care delivery, according to drone experts who spoke with Devex. For example, Matternet, a drone company based in Silicon Valley, went to Malawi to test the use of drones carrying simulated dried blood samples from a community to a hospital. But the company has since shifted its attention to medical samples delivery in Switzerland and the United States. Malawi is just one example of an African country where drone manufacturers and operators see low volume airspace and more flexible regulation, as an opportunity for low-risk experimentation. Low- and middle-income countries might make appealing drone testing grounds, but their populations also have the most to gain from the sustainable delivery of supplies like emergency medicines. Drone experts, governments, and NGOs are navigating the complexities of moving from a proliferation of pilots to progress in the sector. “We are constantly repeating and learning the same thing because there is not a safe environment to collaborate.” --— Olivier Defawe, drones for health lead, VillageReach Regulatory hurdles As drone use cases are still being explored, country regulations can help or hinder efforts to take pilots to scale. In Vanuatu, UNICEF-enlisted experts in Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems are part of the U.N. agency’s plan to deliver vaccines in the island archipelago. First, Katie Gray and Jim Coyne, a husband and wife team based in Australia, were brought in to develop regulations. “When you write regulations, they really should be task and technology agnostic and future proof,” Gray said. Whether drones are delivering vaccines or pizzas, the same regulations should apply, and the rules should not have to be rewritten every time a new technology comes around the corner. Gray and Coyne worked with a small team including Jackie Trief, director at the Civil Aviation Authority Vanuatu. Trief said she recommends that nonprofits seeking to apply drones to their work should partner with an aviation regulatory authority that is already skilled up or connect that authority with one that is. “Relying on an underskilled aviation regulator will set the project and the country back,” Trief said. But regulatory hurdles are not the only challenge: “One major problem is the perception of the technology,” said Faine Greenwood, a UAV consultant, explaining that many people do not understand the distinction between military drones and humanitarian drones. She highlighted the need for more research and community engagement around the public perception of civilian drone technology. Gray and Coyne are scheduled to leave Vanuatu next week, but they are concerned the eight-person team in the civil aviation authority does not have the capacity they need to continue vaccine delivery by drone. “When we leave at the end of the month, if people start knocking on the door wanting to do drone work here, there just won’t be capacity,” Coyne said. This points to a larger challenge in drones for delivery achieving real scale in LMICs. While donors may back a project to get it started, ultimately governments have to invest in order to sustain these projects in the long term, said Joanie Robertson, who leads PATH’s work on drone technology for global health supply chains. How to shape the space The partners involved in the Vanuatu project do not want to see it land on the growing list of drone pilots that have ended before delivering on their potential for social good. The tendency for drone projects to start and stop without reaching scale was part of the reason for the formation of the UAS coordinating body, an effort by seven major donors and international organizations to coordinate their work on unmanned aerial systems in global health. The global health community tends to be a late adopter of promising new technologies, said Rachel Fowler, program analyst at the U.S. Agency for International Development, who has worked with the Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact to support the scale-up of global health innovations. “As we see the rising potential of UAVs in global health, it is critical that we not only explore this potential through assessments and pilot investments, but also come together as donors to coordinate our exploration and how we shape this newer space,” she said. For example, most drones for delivery in LMICs currently only offer one way delivery of blood and vaccines, PATH’s Robertson pointed out. “People on the ground need things moving in both ways,” she said. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is supporting a UAV project that will pursue the bidirectional use of UAVs to and from hospitals and regional health facilities in the Nakata Bay district of Malawi. In the meantime, providers are now sharing the technical and logistical challenges they have encountered during test flights in the Malawi drone corridor via regular webinar meetings organized by the global health organization VillageReach. “We are constantly repeating and learning the same thing because there is not a safe environment to collaborate,” said Olivier Defawe, drones for health lead at VillageReach. David Sarley, a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who focuses on innovation for immunization and is part of the UAS coordinating body, said he believes in the importance of also having local manufacturers and operators involved in the conversation. Through a grant to the Centers for Disease Control, the Gates Foundation this year supported the creation of local medical cargo drone expertise in Papua New Guinea with the help of WeRobotics, which helps local communities use robotics for good. But the foundation has also invested in Silicon Valley drone startup Zipline, which recently announced it has raised $190 million in new financing. Expanding on one reason behind investing in a drone company behemoth rather than a local operator, Sarley emphasized the safety record of Zipline and warned of the higher possibility of failure with smaller and more experimental operations. Zipline aircraft fly programmed routes that cannot be deviated from, unless Zipline controllers give them alternative commands, for example if they are asked to go into a holding pattern, return to base, or pull a parachute and land. “We had to develop our own system because there’s just nothing else out there that can operate safely at a national scale,” said Dan Czerwonka, head of global regulatory affairs at Zipline. He emphasized the importance of taking a partnership approach with regulators rather than seeing them as a roadblock to progress: “We’ve just found a way to work within their framework that they’re satisfied with,” Czerwonka said. While some say Zipline has a monopoly, Czerwonka said the Rwandan government is seeking other partners and pointed out that Zipline is working with Charis, the first certified UAV company based in Rwanda, for its surveying. Zipline offers drones as a service, which positions the drone as a delivery vehicle, Czerwonka said. What is more important to the Zipline model is medical supply management: How blood and vaccines are stored and maintained. “Drones are really sexy and cool right now, but that’s the smallest thing of what we do,” he said. His advice for those interested in the drone space is: Figure out a problem that matters, find customers, and test your solution. That process should inform the design of the aircraft and service. UNICEF and its partners in Vanuatu, and other public-private partnerships working on drone payload delivery, likely have a long way to go before they reach the hundreds of flights a day that Zipline is carrying out. Still, the work in Vanuatu could scale in an unexpected way. Leslie Cary, head of the unmanned aircraft program at the International Civil Aviation Organization, visited Vanuatu in March. This week, Gray and Coyne are submitting details on the Vanuatu model to ICAO, a specialized agency of the United Nations that ensures the safety of air transport globally. Cary told Devex she will review the regulations, add recommendations from ICAO, and possibly use the updated regulations as a template for other countries even as international regulations are developed. Update, May 28, 2019: This story has been updated to reflect that UNICEF enlisted the expertise of Jim Coyne for the Vanuatu project.