Los Angeles – Chinese aerial technology firm EHang Holdings Limited, has announced its upcoming collaboration with an American firm to optimise a drone to automate the delivery of organs for transplant operations.
George Yan, co-founder of EHang, said on Thursday in Los Angeles that it has agreed with Lung Biotechnology PBC to develop and purchase up to 1,000 units of an evolved version of the company’s EHang 184.
He said it would be the world’s first autonomous drone for humans.
“This is only the beginning of how EHang 184 will help to shape mankind’s future.
Yan said the two companies have agreed to work together over the next 15 years on a program known as the Manufactured Organ Transport Helicopter (MOTH) system to optimise the 184 for organ delivery.
He said the collaboration stands to revolutionise the way organs are transported, with the potential to save tens of thousands of lives.
Hu Huazhi, Founder of EHang, said it is exactly the kind of global impact they envisioned when building the 184.
He said the company was launched in April 2014, and headquartered in China’s southern city of Guangzhou.
Huazhi added that in January this year, the company launched its EHang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV), the first drone to offer autonomous human flight over short-to-medium distances.
Martine Rothblatt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lung Biotechnology, said it planned to station the MOTH rotorcraft outside its organ manufacturing facilities.
He said it would also use programmed flight plans to hospitals and recharging pads within the MOTH radius, so that the manufactured organs can be delivered within their post-production window of viability.
“The well-known locations of transplant hospitals and future organ manufacturing facilities make the EHang technology ideal for Highway-In-The-Sky (HITS) and Low-Level IFR Route (LLIR) programmes.
“We anticipate delivering hundreds of organs a day, which means that the MOTH system will help save not only tens of thousands of lives, but also many millions of gallons of aviation transport gasoline annually,”he said. (Xinhua/NAN)
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