Drone company plans to drop blood, medicine in Rwanda

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

Drone delivery might be years away in the U.S., but it’s becoming a reality in Rwanda this summer.

A San Francisco-based drone delivery company says it’ll start making its first deliveries of blood and medicine in Rwanda in July.

Zipline International Inc., backed by tech heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital and Google Ventures, demonstrated its technology for journalists last week in an open field in the San Francisco Bay area.

In a demo broadcast on Periscope on Friday, a staffer launched a fixed-wing plane weighing just 22 pounds off a launcher that used compressed air.

Electric-powered propellers took it the rest of the way, on a flight that could extend to 75 miles round-trip, using military-grade GPS and software to navigate.

As it dipped low before the drop-off area, the bottom popped open, and a cardboard box with a parachute made of butcher paper and biodegradable tape burst out, plopping to the ground a few steps away from CEO Keller Rinaudo.

Company executives said the cost of each flight was about the same as a motorcycle trip, but far more reliable.