“Seen & Heard” is a monthly feature of GPS World magazine, traveling the world to capture interesting and unusual news stories involving the GNSS/PNT industry.
Drone with megaphone. (Screenshot: Xinhuanet video)
Drones and robots fight Coronavirus
China’s efforts to contain the coronavirus include drones and robots, according to news reports. Drones are being used to spray disinfectant and enforce instructions to wear face masks. Some reports say drones with thermal imaging are detecting people with fevers from the air. On the streets, hazmat workers are using tank robots to disinfect 50,000 square meters per hour. Other robots are feeding quarantined air passengers at a hotel and disinfecting rooms.
Jakarta toll road. (Photo: GeorginaCaptures/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images)
Hungary helps Indonesia with road tolling
Indonesia and Hungary are in talks to build a multi-lane free flow (MLFF) e-toll system that allows payments without gates while cars are moving. The technology is estimated to cost US$90 million. The GNSS e-toll system is already installed in several eastern European countries, including Hungary. Using GNSS, motorists are charged tolls through sensors installed inside vehicles that identify their locations.
Photo: Anne Webberi/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images
Albatross on patrol
The albatross, which has a wingspan as long as 11 feet, is helping catch illegal fishing vessels. Henri Weimerskirch of the French National Center for Scientific Research has outfitted nearly 200 albatrosses with GPS trackers that detect radar from ships that lack an automatic identification system. This allows the birds to transmit the locations of fishers in the midst of illicit acts. Fishers who trawl without a license, exceed quotas or underreport their hauls imperil fragile ecosystems and cost the global economy up to $30 billion a year.
A black bear in Shenandoah National Park. (Photo: USNPS/Neal Lewis)
How fare the bears?
When problem bears are relocated outside the Great Smoky Mountains, 74 percent are never seen again. Do they thrive after being moved at least 40 miles from their home range? Upcoming GPS research may figure out what happens to them. “There is a mindset where everybody thinks we can just go catch a bear and move it somewhere else, and everything is okay. And it’s not,” said wildlife biologist Bill Stiver. The U.S. National Park Service has approved a three-year grant for a GPS research project beginning in 2021 to track bears relocated from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
With Coronavirus all over the news, it’s actually encouraging to hear that China is making high-level efforts to contain the infection: two isolation hospitals built in just one week in Wuhan where the outbreak began, travel restrictions inside China, very few people being allowed to leave the country, enforced mask-wearing, and local communities in neighboring provinces blocking visits by outsiders.
Two drone-related stories caught my attention, both in China and connected to the virus outbreak — one where drones were being used to enforce “wear-a-mask (see video), and another where disinfectant was being dispensed by drones.
Photo: Xag
It’s not exactly clear who was behind recent drone flights that broadcast live warnings to people without protective masks on the streets — some villages in rural China were apparently overflown and people were advised to wear a mask while outdoors.
Around Beijing, similar activities were maybe down to well-intentioned social media people and traffic police.
XAG, which has fielded 42,000 agricultural spraying drones in China, is urging authorities to use its drones for widespread disinfectant spraying, and has set up a significant fund to support these activities. The company claims its drones can disinfect a local community in less than four hours, and may already have done so.
Medical transport drones. Staying with the medical theme, Aquiline Drones (AD) in Cincinnati is a drone company operating under a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, and is working on a system to transport human organs for transplants.
VyrtX is an organ transport company in Ohio that has teamed with AD, with the object of creating a highway-in-the-sky across the state to overcome ground delivery delays. Apparently around 25% of precious transplant organs don’t make it in time to be used; they are lost to the patients on lengthy wait lists — and many people are dying as a consequence. There are supposedly enough donors, but organs deteriorate during ground transport and desperate transplant candidates are losing out badly.
So the next step for VyrtX and AD are custom-designed drones for life-saving rapid transport between donor and transplant hospitals. VyrtX is working with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, the Ohio UAS Centers and four Ohio organ procurement organizations to develop the air corridor and begin rapid organ transport by drone across the state.
The University of California, San Diego, Health (UC San Diego Health) is joining an increasing number of health organizations in developing a drone system for blood and documentation transport between its facilities. Collaborating with the UPS Flight Forward drone delivery program and with Matternet, medical payloads will travel between Moores Cancer Center and Jacobs Medical Center. The Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine, about 1.5 miles north, will be added provided initial test flights work out well.
Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)
UPS Flight Forward is another company that was granted (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier authorization and is already operating a UAS delivery program at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C.. UPS Flight Forward is also planning with CVS to deliver prescriptions and other products to CVS pharmacy customers.
Another drone medical supplies delivery system in Tanzania ran an operational trial in the fall of 2018. Wingcopter (a German drone manufacturer), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and DHL flew medicines from the mainland to an island. The DHL Parcelcopter completed a 60-km route autonomously in around 40 minutes, for a total of 2,200 km flown during the pilot project.
Building on these earlier trials, Wingcopter is now working with Merck and the Frankfurt University of Applied Science to demonstrate a drone delivery system between two Merck facilities in Germany. The object is to show the benefits of direct drone airborne transport over trucks for moving small packages between a Merck lab in Gernsheim to its headquarters in Darmstadt.
The first flight was recently accomplished over roughly 15.5 miles between the facilities, carrying a sample of pigments.
Photo: Wingcopter
The BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) flight passed over a dense metropolitan area, power lines, railways, and roadways. Benefits include time savings of around an hour, provided much greater savings at some times, and avoided significant ground vehicle emissions.
To sum up, drones being used to help combat coronavirus, to reduce time and costs for the transport of medical samples and supplies over medium distances, and there’s a spin-off with potential commercial promise, too. It’s a good month for the drone industry…
“With due regard to the safe and healthy environment in Barcelona and the host country today, the GSMA has cancelled MWC Barcelona 2020 because the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concern and other circumstances, make it impossible for the GSMA to hold the event,” said GSMA CEO John Hoffman in a statement. “The host city parties respect and understand this decision. The GSMA and the host city parties will continue to be working in unison and supporting each other for MWC Barcelona 2021 and future editions. Our sympathies at this time are with those affected in China, and all around the world.”
GSMA, which organizes Mobile World Congress, represent the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting more than 750 operators and nearly 400 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies.
Xag is setting up a 5-million-yuan fund on coronavirus response, calling for voluntary drone disinfection operations in China.
According to Xag, the 5-million-yuan fund is committed to providing Xag’s agricultural drone users with technical support to properly carry out aerial disinfectant sprays that help curb the spread of virus, especially in rural villages with weaker health system and poorer sanitation condition.
Operations will target densely populated outdoor public places and those communities having confirmed or suspected cases of coronavirus, the company added. Another focus of the initiative is to clean and disinfect medical and epidemic prevention vehicles moving between affected and unaffected areas.
According to Xag, it will cover all the spare parts and maintenance expenses for those who voluntarily engage, and disinfection actions would be taken under the permission of Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and relevant government authorities.
