Flipkart to lead ‘Medicines from the Sky’ project

E-commerce giant, Flipkart, has partnered with Telangana government to lead “Medicines from the Sky” project.

Medicines from the Sky project

• Consortium has been tasked with development and execution of drone deliveries of medical supplies to remote areas under the project.
• Under the consortium, Walmart-owned Flipkart will deploy drones and will enable deliveries of vaccines & medical supplies.
• Drone delivery of supplies will be complemented with technologies like geo mapping, trace of location and routing of shipments.
• Technologies have been developed by Flipkart over years in serving millions of customers across India.
• These technologies will be used to conduct ‘Beyond Visual Line of Sight’ (BVLOS) deliveries in remote areas in Telangana where road infrastructure is not conducive to deliver vaccines faster.
• This project is conceived by World Economic Forum and Healthnet Global Limited which outlines the requirements for drone delivery and assess to proposals.

How covid-19 crisis pushed for technological development?

COVID-19 crisis has pushed for rapid development of scalable and robust technologies for faster delivery of medicines and services in order to contain the pandemic. ‘Medicines from the Sky project’ is a testament of this push.

What is Beyond Visual Line of Sight?

Distances where drones and UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) operate outside its normal visible range are known as beyond visual line of sight. It is the second stage of testing of drones. Drones are operated within visual line of sight in first phase of testing.

Month: Current Affairs - June, 2021