MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.— Matternet, developer of the world’s leading urban drone logistics platform, today announced its first deployment of the Matternet Station at EOC hospital group in Lugano, Switzerland. The Station brings to completion a holistic logistics system, which together with the Matternet M2 drone and Cloud Platform, will enable automated drone delivery. This major enhancement will allow Matternet to accelerate the roll-out of city-wide networks, the first of which will be in Abu Dhabi, UAE, as announced earlier this month.
Matternet’s drones have been flying beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) over Swiss cities for more than four years with Swiss Post. Following a trial period, the Station will replace human operators at the Italiano facility of EOC in Lugano, a customer Swiss Post and Matternet have served jointly since 2017.
Urban drone operations promise to significantly advance on-demand and last-mile logistics by making transport of physical goods within cities faster, cheaper, and more sustainable. Specifically, the Station takes the already robust Matternet platform to new levels of reliability, security, and efficiency by adding:
An elegantly designed architectural structure, the Station’s small footprint and precision landing system permit colocation at customer facilities and seamless integration within their operation. At 3 meters (10 feet) tall, the Station keeps drones out of reach to maximize safety on the ground.
For health systems, Matternet can do for inter-facility transport what a pneumatic tube does within the walls of the hospital, giving every healthcare facility in a metropolitan area an easy and fast way to deliver to one another. Current and future benefits include faster diagnostics, shipment of time-critical supplies on demand, centralization of inventory for just-in-time replenishment across fragmented points-of-care, and consolidation of distributed facilities (e.g. labs and pharmacies) to lower overhead.
“The Station is critical for unlocking scalable drone delivery at attractive unit economics,” said Andreas Raptopoulos, CEO of Matternet. “Its accessibility and ease-of-use makes Matternet’s drone-as-a-service platform even more valuable to customers in healthcare and beyond, while significantly improving the sustainability of last-mile logistics. It is a critical piece of the puzzle that advances Matternet’s vision for global, city-wide drone delivery networks.”
About Matternet
Matternet has developed best-in-class technology for on-demand, aerial delivery in urban environments. The company provides its technology platform-as-a-service to healthcare and logistics organizations. In March 2017, Matternet became the first company in the world to be authorized for commercial BVLOS operations of drone logistics networks over cities in Switzerland. In March 2019, Matternet and UPS announced a partnership to provide drone delivery services to US healthcare systems, with networks at WakeMed Health in NC and Wake Forest Baptist Health. In October 2019, Matternet’s technology enabled the first FAA-Approved Drone Airline in the US, UPS Flight Forward. In September 2020, Matternet expanded to Asia through a partnership with Japan Airlines (JAL). In November 2020, Matternet initiated the first permanent BVLOS medical drone network in the European Union with Labor Berlin. In September 2021, Matternet powered the first Covid-19 vaccine drone delivery in the United States. To date, Matternet technology has enabled 15,000+ commercial revenue drone flights. For more information about Matternet, please visit: https://mttr.net.
