After being widely used in European and African countries to deliver medical supplies, drones might begin to do the same in North Carolina. This is subject to the approval of a bid by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to be part of a federal test program.

Charity Begins at Home

NCDOT is working with a group of private companies in a bid to set up distribution centers across the state that would use these companies’ unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones to deliver medical supplies across the state to medical centers whenever needed. These companies have a wide understanding of the field and are equipped to offer outstanding services, having done it abroad for years now. They include Zipline, a company that has become renowned worldwide for its drone delivery of medical supplies in Rwanda and Matternet, a company delivering supplies in Zurich in Switzerland. These companies are some of the first companies that have pioneered these services but have yet to begin operating in America.

NCDOT’s proposal is one of the more than 200 proposals sent to FAA’s Drone Integration Pilot Program. This program was started by the Trump administration to spearhead the testing of drones for various uses in a way to determine the safe expansion of the use of commercial drones in the US.

According to Elaine Chao, the Transportation Secretary, the FAA is going to select only 10 teams for the program. If North Carolina is among the lucky few, there is no set time frame for when the drones will officially begin doing the deliveries according to the NCDOT spokesperson, Joseph Pierce. However, he noted that the technology that the state plans to use is already available and in use in some parts of the world.

Safe Integration of Drones into the Airspace

Even though drones have proven to be very useful and efficient, their use has been limited by restrictive federal safety guidelines. The biggest restriction is the requirement that a drone pilot must be able to see the drone they are flying at all times, ruling out long-distance drone deliveres. This was the major reason that led Trump to announce the test program late last year to look into how drones can be safely integrated into the national airspace.