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ANA, JAL plan to launch drone services to remote areas

13 Comments
By Osamu Nakahi

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A promising future for remote areas? - Counting more drones now than ambulances in the countryside during daily 81km bike rides. - Gambare, Nippon.

2 ( +7 / -5 )

daily 81km bike rides

awesome!

3 ( +4 / -1 )

@snowymountainhell

Dunno why people down voted you. This is pretty cool.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

When I saw the headline, I thought that they would be flying people in drones.

8 ( +8 / -0 )

The drone, whose propellers rotate at high speed before the 8-kilogram body slowly rises off the ground, took about 10 minutes one way to reach its destination, compared with 45 minutes needed by conventional delivery using a ship-and-land route.

However, there is a vast difference in the load capacity of each method of transportation which is not mentioned in the article. For relatively light items like medicines then using drones may be realistic but for bulkier and heavier food supplies then perhaps less useful.

In another trial, fresh fish caught off the Goto Islands were carried by a drone to the nearby main island of Kyushu and airlifted aboard a JAL flight from Nagasaki airport to Tokyo to be served at restaurants in the capital the same day.

No mention of the quantity which was carried by drone.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Taking liberty with a famous line from a popular old movie:

"You're going to need a bigger drone."

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I'm sure this will work in some configuration, but as lifelines go, its a very precarious one.

This testing also sounds like something 100% funded with our (taxpayer) money. It might be wiser to allow drone tech to mature further before writing blank cheques to ANA and JAL to play with them in nonsensical experiments that carry raw fish to posh restaurants.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

No mention of the quantity which was carried by drone.

I was reading about this a few months back. I think they are using Wingcopters, developed by a German company. They're impressive bits of kit, can carry a 6KG payload over 75KM. That's the equivalent of 5 bottles of wine, which you could fly from central Tokyo to the top of Mt. Fuji in about 30 mins.

https://www.ana-drone.com/project

https://wingcopter.com/launch-wingcopter-198

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Rwanda yes Rwanda has been using drones to ferry blood and drugs to remote areas for more than 7 years now, and if you didn't know it is a small country in Central Africa. It took the geniuses in the ministry this long to think about drones, by the way how much taxpayer money is being used to subsidize this new venture to gift away taxes to underserving big companies while those in need are turned down countless times for the meagre 300K government corona aid.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Also imagined myself in a harness hanging from a drone. As long as we get parachutes, it might be fun!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"Rwanda yes Rwanda has been using drones to ferry blood and drugs to remote areas for more than 7 years now, and if you didn't know it is a small country in Central Africa. It took the geniuses in the ministry this long to think about drones, "

Ah, Rwanda.

That country using drones built and operated by Zipline, a California-based robotics company?

This is old, VERY OLD news.

I am sure nobody in Japan knew about this until you posted!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Japan is now a slow slow country to experience innovation in these days…

0 ( +0 / -0 )

ClippetyClopSep. 5  11:06 am JST

I was reading about this a few months back. I think they are using Wingcopters, developed by a German company. They're impressive bits of kit, can carry a 6KG payload over 75KM. That's the equivalent of 5 bottles of wine, which you could fly from central Tokyo to the top of Mt. Fuji in about 30 mins.

https://www.ana-drone.com/project

https://wingcopter.com/launch-wingcopter-198

Thank you, that is useful information which the writer neglected to include in the article.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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