Objectives

The VITAS project focuses on the research and development of new enabling technologies that will facilitate, in the future, the deployment of healthcare logistics solutions with highly autonomous UAS operating from automated vertiports, significantly improving the efficiency of current logistics chains for areas of difficult access and low population density.

The general objectives of the VITAS project are as follows:

• Improve the safety of operations in vertiport environments. Currently, drones do not usually have specific infrastructure for landing and take-off, which means that when there are several operations in parallel, coordination is carried out manually, with the limitations that this entails when it comes to ensuring a minimum level of safety and scalability. The VITAS project aims to develop technologies that will allow in the future a high degree of digitalization and automation in the vertiports aerial operations.

• Increase the autonomy of UAS operations to increase their efficiency. Currently, the vast majority of UAS are controlled by a pilot and have a low degree of operational automation. This causes the operating cost to increase and makes UAS operations less competitive. Within the framework of VITAS, and with the aim of covering healthcare logistics applications, it is essential to develop technologies that allow the level of autonomy of UAS to be increased This includes automating critical maneuvers such as takeoff and landing, which currently require significant pilot intervention.

• Moving towards the decarbonization of emergency medical transport by means of long-range electric drones. The VITAS project proposes the development of technologies that will enable the future use of electric aerial vehicles for healthcare logistics, thus contributing to the fulfilment of European objectives against climate change.