Snowdonia Aerospace BVLOS Emergency Medical Response Drone Trial

The project was conducted at the Snowdonia Aerospace Centre, Llanbedr, North Wales, and funded by the UK Space Agency and Welsh Government under a National Space Technology Programme/Space for Smarter Government Programme

Jeremy Howitt

Immediately before lockdown, a team from Snowdonia Aerospace, with partners SwiftFlight Avionics, University of Manchester and the Welsh Ambulance Service, completed a successful flight demo that showed proof-of-concept for beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) delivery of a defibrillator by drone to a remote, rural location that would be difficult to reach with an ambulance in a timely fashion.

This is the first demo of this type in the UK and one of only a handful that have been conducted worldwide.

The project was conducted at the Snowdonia Aerospace Centre, Llanbedr, North Wales, and funded by the UK Space Agency and Welsh Government under a National Space Technology Programme/Space for Smarter Government Programme to show how satellite-enabled drones could be used as part of a broader satellite-enabled network to support remote healthcare services in rural Welsh communities.

We’re also very grateful to Schiller UK for the loan of a FRED easyport mini defibrillator. The defibrillator was delivered by parachute drop to a “first aider” and “casualty” on a remote beach.

The drop point was 4.5 kilometres from the launch location and took 2 minutes 50 seconds to complete, whereas an ambulance would have taken an estimated 20+ minutes to reach the same location. We’re looking forward to continuing the BVLOS capability development as part of the upcoming UK Research & Innovation Future Flight Challenge and engaging with other emergency response stakeholders.