RigiTech, Delivrone initiate French nighttime BVLOS drone delivery

France’s budding UAV services startup Delivrone has teamed up with one of Europe’s most ambitious and fast-moving drone delivery companies, RigiTech, to initiate beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) missions between French hospitals – including rare nighttime flights.

As DroneDJ reported last month, Rouen-based Delivrone has been preparing the launch of medical drone deliveries of patient samples between hospitals and analysis labs in the northwest of France for much of this year. Trial runs over an initial 41-kilometer route between facilities in the cities of Maubeuge and Valenciennes have been sufficiently successful to lead the Norman startup to recruit Swiss company RigiTech to test what are even now relatively rare BVLOS flights during the night.

This month RigiTech announced the success and launch of Delivrone’s healthcare transport activity between the two medical centers. In doing so it said its Eiger delivery drone had permitted the partners to “establish an efficient and secure network for transporting critical medical supplies between clinics and hospitals during nighttime aeronautic hours” in BVLOS mode.

Those Delivrone flights cut the usual 45-minute time required by road transportation in nearly half. Just as importantly, the successful operation of BVLOS UAVs after dark using RigiTech’s drone and operating system enables the kind of 24/7 delivery service that hospitals and clinics will need to replace cars and vans with less expensive and non-polluting aerial alternatives.

Initiation of the Maubeuge-Valenciennes operation opens the way for Delivrone to increase the cadence of its flights to meet client demand. It will also permit the startup to continue expanding the nighttime BVLOS activity with RigiTech as they widen their activity to other medical customers in the region, and beyond.

“These successful BVLOS operations demonstrate our commitment to expanding innovative healthcare logistics in France, and around the world,” said David Rovira, RigiTech’s chief business officer.

If the relatively young Delivrone is for now focused on building its business in the north of France, however, the Swiss company has already started scaling abroad that it hopes to build on.

After initiating BVLOS medical drone deliveries in France and its domestic market, the Lausanne-based company has gotten busy diversifying activity. That includes UAV supply transport to offshore wind farms in Denmark, and offering global aerial operations with US partner Spright. 

Earlier this month, UK-based international drone services group Skyports said it will be introducing RigiTech’s Eiger drone in its UAV delivery fleet when it launches BVLOS transport between South Korea’s Yeosu City and islands off its coast.