@Toyota: Toyota Tsusho Conducts Kyushu’s First Delivery Demonstration of Prescription Drugs Using Level 4 Flight of Drones

Since May 2022, Sora-iina has been delivering medical and pharmaceutical supplies and other items to secondary remote islands in Goto City that cannot be directly accessed from the mainland using level 3 flight (non-visual flight over unmanned areas) with fixed-wing drones.* In this method, packages are dropped by parachute into a pre-determined unmanned area, such as a port, and the customer must go to the designated location to pick up the package.

In the future, level 4 flight will be essential to achieving direct delivery to manned areas such as the doorsteps of homes and medical institutions. However, under the current system, it is necessary to obtain permission and approval from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism for pre-specified flight routes, which means that the number of application routes will increase as the number of delivery destinations increases, presenting a challenge for social implementation.

The purposes of this demonstration are to identify technical and operational issues for level 4 flight to enable flight route applications by area, as well as to propose future regulatory and systemic reforms.

Since 2023, Goto City has been providing online medical treatment, in which a nurse rides in a mobile clinic equipped with medical equipment to visit the homes of patients who have difficulty traveling and coordinates with a doctor in a clinic. Since nurses cannot give prescription drugs to patients from the mobile clinic, the clinic staff delivers them individually the next day.

In this demonstration, using a multicopter-type drone capable of vertical takeoff and landing, we conducted a demonstration of the delivery of prescription drugs from a clinic to the doorstep of a mobile clinic promptly after medical treatment using level 4 flight. In the future, we will verify the effects and issues of this demonstration, organize the requirements for achieving flight route applications by area, and through discussions with the government, make proposals for future regulatory and systemic reforms.

Through the Sora-iina business, Toyota Tsusho aims for the social implementation of an on-demand delivery system to the doorsteps of destinations using level 4 flight of drones.

This demonstration was conducted jointly with ACSL Ltd., Nagasaki University, and MONET Technologies Inc., with the cooperation of Nagasaki Prefecture and Goto City, as part of the “FY2024 Survey Project Related to Development and Construction of Leading Services and Regulatory and Systemic Reforms” in Nagasaki Prefecture and Fukuoka Prefecture, which have been designated by the Cabinet Office as “Kizuna” Special Zones.

Toyota Tsusho	Coordination of the entire survey project, discussion of regulatory and systemic reforms
Sora-iina	Demonstration site preparation, assistance with delivery operations
ACSL	Provision of level 4 flight aircrafts, level 4 flight operations
Nagasaki Prefecture	Discussion of regulatory and systemic reform proposals
Goto City	Coordination and cooperation with mobile clinics, Tamanoura Clinic operation
Nagasaki University	Assistance with discussions between medical professionals, verification of effectiveness of prescription drug delivery
MONET Technologies	Development, coordination, and cooperation of mobile clinic vehicles