UST034

93 “Everything else would be automated, in a far more controlled environment than we currently have with our field-to-lab transport solutions,” Hirt remarks. “Initially therefore I contacted a friend of mine at Quantum-Systems, managing director Armin Busse, and asked him if we could test the autonomous transport of a set of sample tubes with one of their UAVs.” Busse says, “A year ago we’d written a proposal for a project by the German Ministry of Infrastructure that was based around fast hospital-to-hospital transport of urgent pharmaceuticals. That was also in Munich, where a lot of hospitals don’t have large pharmacy stocks and often have to share medicines and other equipment between themselves within a 60-minute deadline. “When Robert told me about his idea for UAV deliveries of coronavirus samples, I realised that we already had the necessary operating procedures and steps written in that proposal. The region, market and use-case were essentially identical, down to the specialised equipment we’d be installing on our UAV to ensure it could carry the medical supplies and fly BVLOS over urban terrain without any technological issues.” As well as preventing the contamination of test samples, another advantage with using an autonomous network of delivery UAVs is the speed and flexibility of on-demand, cost- effective small aircraft versus more costly and traffic-affected services transporting samples by road. The UAV would also have digital controls in its payload bay to monitor, transmit and adjust the environmental conditions in which the samples would sit during transit, and safety would be improved by reducing the chances of a human courier accidentally breaking a sample tube and triggering a lockdown in an otherwise healthy area. “Of course, it would have been deeply irresponsible to do this first-of-its-kind trial flight carrying actual tubes of coronavirus in a UAV over populated areas, so the samples were literally ‘test’ samples, containing only water to represent the fluid inside that could be measured and checked before and after the flight,” Hirt adds. Flight technology and infrastructure The Trinity F90+ is the flagship of Quantum-Systems’ UAV fleet. It features three VTOL-transition tiltrotors (a holdover from its predecessor, the quad-tiltrotor Tron, profiled in UST 34, June/July 2017) along with the company’s modular snap-fit payload systems to fit its 700 g carrying capacity, and a foam-cut fuselage to optimise weight, cost and power. It is a 5 kg battery-electric UAV with a 2.4 m wingspan capable of flying for 90 minutes or more – the company will ‘unlock’ additional flight time when and where regulations allow longer flights – in temperatures between -12 C and +50 C, at a cruising speed of 61 kph. It needed only minor modifications for this application. “We had to modify the payload, as we didn’t need payload sensors for this kind of mission,” Busse says. “Instead, to carry the sample tubes we used 3D printing to make a special box with an integral test tube rack, for securely packaging potential samples of Covid-19. Trinity F90+ Covid-19 sample courier | In operation Unmanned Systems Technology | October/November 2020 The use of robotic arms as dynamic launch & recovery systems forms part of Quantum-Systems’ concept for autonomous droneports