Cornwall, in the southwest corner of England, has become a hub for efforts to demonstrate how drones could overcome infrastructure limitations and generate economic opportunities through services such as ship-to-shore supply flights. Over the next 15 months, the Open Skies Cornwall project will conduct flight trials using a Skyports drone to support real-life use cases with the National Health Service (NHS), Royal Mail, Falmouth Harbour, and the UK military’s emergency relief group JHubMed. The trials will be backed by £2.4 million ($2.9 million) in funding from UK Research and Innovation as part of the Future Flight Challenge.
The work is being coordinated by DronePrep, a company developing its Drone Delivery Register as an online platform for a network of what it calls Skyhighways by connecting drone operators with landowners. The Skyhighways, which will follow defined routes, could be used for such purposes as transporting medical samples and delivering packages to remote communities and supplies to cruise ships.
