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By Padraic Halpin and Jason Cairnduff
Moneygall, IRELAND, May 18 (Reuters) - Ireland's Manna Aero
should have been dropping off its first takeaway orders around a
Dublin university campus by drone in March but then the
coronavirus pandemic shut the country and its pilot programme
down.
Within a week, the drone company was testing out an entirely
different concept - delivering medication and critical supplies
to isolated elderly people whom the Irish government had told to
stay home to avoid infection.
Manna worked with Ireland's health service operator to try
out the system in Moneygall, the small midlands town best known
for its ancestral links to former U.S. President Barack Obama,
who visited in 2011.
After weeks of flying to and from residents' homes, the
local pharmacy and convenience store - located at the Barack
Obama Plaza motorway service station - Mana says it has proved
the technology works.
"We wanted to do something small but meaningful that would
be representative of what the future might look like either in
an extended lockdown or a repeated lockdown in the future,"
Manna Aero chief executive and founder Bobby Healy told Reuters.
"Long term, we know that the future is going to have drone
delivery. This helps with hearts and minds around how important,
how safe and how practical autonomous delivery is going to be
while at the same time genuinely helping a small town under
really difficult circumstances."
Manna, which counts Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, an early
Facebook backer, among its investors, will continue the
deliveries on a non-commercial basis and could cover around 600
towns of similar size around the country by the end of the year
if the government wishes, Healy said.
With one drone capable of making 100 4-kilogramme deliveries
a day, that could involve not only the 450 licensed drone pilots
in Ireland but also some of the many pilots Ryanair and
IAG-owned Aer Lingus have said they plan to let go as a
result of the coronavirus disruption.
In Moneygall, locals are running a dedicated phone line
rather than a mobile phone application so vulnerable residents
like Fidelma Gleeson, 70, can order bread and milk, and have her
prescription medicines brought to the door.
"Well it means an awful lot to me. I thought I'd never see
the day that that would happen, that I wouldn't have to be
getting into my car and going into town to collect it," she
said.
While Mana, which partnered with food delivery giant Just
Eat on the postponed university project, hopes
ultimately to replace road-based delivery, the COVID-19 project
is personal to Healy and Mana's staff of 23.
"My mother is 76 years old. If she was in Moneygall, I have
no doubt whatsoever that she would be constantly going up to the
shop and putting her life at risk," said Healy, a former chief
technology officer at online car hire brokerage CarTrawler.
"If we're asking elderly people to do something really
difficult, we should do everything we can to make that easy for
them."
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, editing by Ed Osmond)
