Zipline

Product Description

Zipline is a delivery drone manufacturer that specializes in medical supplies delivery in remote locations in all weather conditions. Their drones or “Zips” are fixed-wing delivery drones that are currently serving up to 13,000 people in Rwanda (21 hospitals) and Ghana (more than 2,000 facilities). Their mission is to integrate their delivery system into the healthcare system and deliver life-saving medical products to remote hospitals or individuals in under 30 minutes. The Zip does not require a landing site at the delivery locations as the medical product is dropped by parachute into a designated landing zone, a target area of five meters in diameter, and then returns back to the distribution depot.

Zipline has expanded and devised additional applications in the US:

US healthcare to provide on demand delivery for patients, either at home after a doctor virtual visit or if they need critical medication.
Life sciences to give the opportunity to life sciences companies to reach patients beyond the usual urban areas and cover a wider range of population in studies.
Covid-19 Response to provide vulnerable patients with critical medication.
Defense and disaster response: to deliver life saving medical supplies in combat or disaster zones

Target Users (Target Impact Group)

Distributors / Implementing Organizations

Zipline, GAVI, UPS, and the Rwandan Ministry of Health

Design Specifications

Zipline's "Zip" is a fixed wind drone. It is a proprietary design with all software and hardware designed in-house. It has a range of 100-150 km round trip, with 1.75 kg of cargo, depending on wind conditions. It is designed with redundancy in mind as it features two motors with independent batteries with redundant flight hardware both internal to the drone as well as on the ground based flight control servers. In the event of a catastrophic failure it has an emergency parachute and kevlar fuselage. The navigation software is proprietary and is called ZipNav. The flight code is written in C/C++ on the drone and C++ and Python on the ground systems. They utilize Micrium for the RTOS on the drone. Embedded systems on the drone use both Hercules and Atmel processors. Technical details: - Zipline uses pneumatic launch ramps to fire the drones aloft - Drone power supply: 2 interchangeable batteries - Drone weight: ~10 kg - Products are discharged with a parachute into a designated landing zone

Technical Support

Provided by Zipline as a part of the service

Replacement Components

Batteries

Lifecycle

Unknown

Manufacturer Specified Performance Parameters

To be the last mile solution for critical medical supply deliveries in remote areas regardless of terrain or infrastructure.

Vetted Performance Status

Since launch, Zipline has over 42,385 deliveries including over 10,000 units of blood. Most deliveries arrive in under 30 minutes. ^{Interview with representative} The drones can deliver a product in about 15 minutes. They are capable of flying up to 75 mph with a range of about 93 miles. Each drone can support a payload of up to 3½ pounds.

Safety

All flights are coordinated with The Rwandan Civil Aviation Authority. All of the flight systems and hardware have built-in redundancies as well as an emergency parachute landing system in the case of catastrophic failure.

Complementary Technical Systems

Drone guidance system that logs the GPS coordinates for a received request and prints a delivery box label with a scannable code that programs the drone’s flight plan, thermally insulated packaging for the medicines, and blood. Zipline is also designing a custom guidance system.