Autonomous Cargo Aerial Last Mile Resupply (A CALM-R)

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THE PROBLEM:The current Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for rapid drone delivery of large amounts of medicine/food to remote households/communities who have symptoms, and therefore should not leave their homes. There is also a need to supply hospitals and other the medical staff with large amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE), with 742 million pieces of protective gear delivered to date.The government has stated that it has been a logistical problem and a 'enormous challenge' to deliver to 58,000 organisations, including pharmacies, care homes, GP surgeries and hospitals.This crisis has highlighted the inability of supermarket home delivery methods to cope with high demand. Tesco has recently announced that up to 90% of shopping will still need to be conducted in person, in store. Our innovative solution of a flexible, compact and reconfigurable heavy lift hybrid drone, will tackle the new or emerging societal or industry needs in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, within the subject area of couriers and delivery (rural and/or city based).OUR SOLUTION:Hybrid Drones Ltd are developing a game changing solution, which involves a novel combination of jet turbines and rotors. Our target is to be able to autonomously carry a maximum payload of 100 kg (with a volume of up to one cubic metre), over a distance of 10 km, within 10 minutes. The current generation of fully electric drone delivery systems are typically limited to 1-2 kg of payload and an endurance of 20 minutes. Our flexible jet turbine-electric hybrid design also enables the carriage of smaller payloads out to a range of 32 km.THE WIDER CONTEXT:In a wider context, such a system could have wide applications in disaster relief. From 1992 to 2014, floods, droughts and storms affected 4.2 billion people (95% of all people affected by disasters) and caused US$1.3 trillion worth of damage. The first quarter of 2020 has seen both wild fires in Australia and floods in the UK, in addition to the Coronavirus impact.Organisations such as the Department for International Development (DFID) in the UK, and the European Commission (Affordable High-Tech for Humanitarian Aid), are just starting the reap the benefits of using drones for disaster relief.By 2050, flood damage in the world's coastal cities is expected to reach $1 trillion a year, as sea levels rise and global warming triggers new extremes of heat, windstorms and rain.