Lifesaving Drones

Dave: Norbert, we may think it's cool to get our pizza delivered by a drone, but it just pales next to what one company is doing in Africa. These guys are delivering lifesaving medical supplies to remote regions in Africa. Wow.

Norbert: I know! It's a California robotics firm called Zipline and these drones can zip along at one hundred eighty miles an hour.

One of Zipline's founders became inspired after a visit to Tanzania where people died because of poor infrastructure. While a courier can deliver blood within minutes in America, only a third of Africans live within a mile of a road that's open year round. That's why the Rwandan government partnered with Zipline.

After a text, the drones can deliver blood or medicine within thirty minutes even up to ninety miles away. The drones are loaded and launched from a 'nest' base in the city center. First the flight path is loaded onto a SIM card, then the drone flies to the clinic that placed the order and drops the payload using a paper parachute from a low altitude before returning to base.

Its path is tracked using a tablet app and can be altered as needed. Each drone is the size of a large dog and can carry three and a half pounds of blood or medicine, and can make fifty to one hundred fifty deliveries a day. The Zipline drones are incredibly affordable, costing about as much as a motorcycle.

One major challenge for some countries is their unstable governments where the drones could be mistaken for a weapon. But this isn't stopping a number of developing countries from exploring these lifesaving machines.