Care & Equity – Healthcare Logistics UAS Scotland (CAELUS)

This project brings together expertise and skills from large and small organisations, universities and non-profit research and technology organisations to demonstrate the technological and socio-economic viability of a drone-enabled distribution network for medical items such as organs, blood products, high-value medicines and medical consumables over Scotland. The goal is to design an innovative logistic network capable of providing increased responsiveness and capillarity of medical delivery in urban and rural geography uniquely found in Scotland, while ensuring lower costs, reliability, robustness, safety and regulatory compliance.

A digital demonstrator will be created with computer models of the different components of this system of systems, such as a digital model of the drones, the ground infrastructure needed to recharge the vehicles and the system used to manage the traffic of drones while flying. By exploring various operating conditions and different configurations of the network and by ensuring that appropriate market analyses and public perception are accurately taken into consideration, a digital blue print of the drone delivery network will be created connecting potentially hundreds of hospitals, pathology laboratories, distribution centres and GP units.

The integration of digital technology demonstration with market analyses, stakeholder engagement and assessment of public perception is a key objective of the project as these elements are recognised barriers to adoption of drone services that need to be addressed to be able to reach a viable and accepted solution and therefore develop this emerging sector which is expected to bring a significant social and economic benefit to Scotland.

Regulatory challenges are another key focus area, URANOS aims to address these by conducting a series of live trials aimed to inform the regulatory pathways in the definition of protocols and rules for safe operation of autonomous drones in the same airspace as civil transport aircraft.

Despite focussing on such a specific use case as medical delivery and being tailored to the specific geographical region of Scotland, URANOS could also have impact on a larger scale. In addition to the healthcare sector benefits, URANOS will open the way to the deployment of drone-enabled logistics in other sectors of the economy. It will change the way airspace is managed and utilised by manned and unmanned vehicles and will favour the realisation of sustainability goals, such as the carbon neutrality of distribution networks, supporting the energy transition and contributing towards the Scottish Government's target of a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2045\.