Project CAELUS

Trialling how an uncrewed traffic management system can enable drone based medical deliveries.

Project CAELUS

Get the Project CAELUS White Paper

Project CAELUS brought together 16 partners to deliver the UK's first national drone network equipped to transport essential medical supplies across Scotland.

The initiative trialled how an uncrewed traffic management system could enable automated drone flights to make medical deliveries quickly and efficiently within rural environments, alongside current aircraft and other airspaces users.

As part of this initiative, NATS worked with a number of airports and other air navigation service providers to identify the operational requirements, and ensure the appropriate safety procedures were in place for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations in controlled airspace. As part of this work, we provided a robust safety submission to the regulator, in this case the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

The first phase of the project demonstrated how a drone network could connect hospitals, pathology laboratories, distribution centres and GP surgeries across Scotland. The second phase integrated two different types of drone to improve the speed and extend the use for time-critical medical supplies of varying payloads.

The third phase realised live test flights in a number of different locations across Scotland, validated the concept of operations and new technology to integrate these life changing flights into the UK airspace.

Get the Project CAELUS White Paper here.

The CAELUS consortium members are AGS Airports Limited (Aberdeen, Glasgow & Southampton Airports), NHS Scotland, NATS, University of Strathclyde, Connected Places Catapult, ANRA Technology, Atkins, Arup, Cellnex Telecom, Commonplace Digital, DGP Intelsius, Dronamics, Planefinder, Skyports Deliveries Ltd, The Drone Office, Trax International.

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